Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/27653
UC@MC: A UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS ROLLOUT As soon as we plugged a phone into their less-than- healthy PC, that became painfully obvious. •People use PCs for a lot of things, and some of those things affect phone calls. Guess what? If you stream audio or video to a well-used PC, bad things happen to your phone calls. If a Windows update installs while you are on the phone, you might notice. What you probably won’t do, however, is correlate the factors. The end result is a general perception of inconsistent reliability. •Prioritizing voice traffic is problematic. While technically possible, prioritizing voice traffic at the application layer is much more challenging, and less reliable, than doing it at the network layer, especially with this particular technology. These factors manifested themselves in complaints of delays when answering calls, and inconsistent call quality. Curiously, these issues did not seem to arise during the pilot phase, and actually did not become apparent as a serious problem until weeks or months after deployment. A contributing factor here is a certain reluctance to report problems with new technology, possibly out of a belief that “the bugs will eventually get worked out.” While hindsight illuminates a technology decision we could have made differently, the more important lesson here is that you will not avoid all problems. However, they are more easily handled if you pay very close attention to any feedback and react to it promptly. WHAT’S NEXT? Lync and IP Phones In familiar Microsoft rebranding style, OCS has now become Lync. While Lync has many nice features, the www.iltanet.org Exchange 2010 25 biggest one for us is the fact that it supports an affordable, integrated IP phone. Sold! By the time you read this, MC will have Lync users in production, using PC-integrated IP phones. More Training While we did extensive initial training, people need more. The next round will be focused not only on Lync, but how to take advantage of all the technology we put on peoples’ desks to provide outstanding client service. And hopefully, make work life a little more enjoyable. UC@MC has been an incredible experience. It affirmed the power of making strong links between business strategy and technology. It illustrated the advantages of taking calculated risks, and it confirmed the importance of vendor relationships. With the benefit of hindsight, we might have done a couple of things differently, but UC was the right thing to do for McInnes Cooper, and we are now on the right side of the learning curve. This is game-changing technology! ILTA