The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/163881
best practices Telecom Sourcing Best Practices by Sameer Hilal of vCom Solutions With telecom services continuing to account for 45 percent of annual IT spending (according to Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast Q4-2012), IT leaders must continue to focus on optimizing the management of their telecom environment. In order to manage an enterprise's telecom environment effectively, one must consider all aspects of the telecom life cycle, including sourcing and procurement; service, management and optimization; and accounting and business intelligence. The IT department must ensure it is leveraging the right resources and tools, whether internal or external, to achieve the greatest value. The telecom life cycle begins with sourcing. Here are six essential steps for successful telecom sourcing. 1.Learn Your Carrier Options: Considering the critical nature of an enterprise's network, an essential starting point of the sourcing process is to learn the various carrier options. All carriers are not created equal. Tier one carriers offer the best peering, and by default, provide similar industry-standard service-level agreements (SLAs). They typically do not oversubscribe their networks, and they provide the greatest coverage. This becomes crucial when looking at a customermanaged VPN-based WAN solution, for example, where deploying a homogeneous network reduces the challenges of overcoming the whims of the Internet. A tier one-enabled network offers better peering and reduces the unpredictability of the Internet. On the other hand, tier two and some cable companies provide inexpensive alternative solutions. Although their networks may not provide the same SLAs or quality, they may prove sufficient for a small branch office or as a backup solution. 18 Peer to Peer Customer Example: A top-100 national law firm was migrating voice services at their corporate headquarters, with the goal of building more network resiliency. The new carrier architecture required carrier as well as access fault tolerance to ensure inbound and outbound calls were delivered seamlessly. The firm implemented a primary solution through a tier one carrier, a secondary solution through a tier two carrier across a diverse fiber link, and a cloud-based offsite backup automated-attendant for emergency call routing to an alternate location. The resulting environment afforded the business the desired fault tolerance and automated failover.