Take UC To All Your Customers

You’ve got to love references. Not only do they show that an existing customer is happy with your work, they also give you an easy-to-come-by jolt of revenue. Still, performing the work isn’t always a carefree process. One VAR, Internetworking Specialists, Inc. (INSI), recently was referred to a new customer by Motorola. The resulting project was anything but simple. However, the reward was a $250,000 sale with 50 times the potential in the future.

The customer, a large publishing company, was opening a new location to cope with the added work of new business. Having multiple locations with a variety of networking equipment and communications technology in place gave the publisher a good idea of what aspects of its communications weren’t working as needed. Therefore, in planning the unified communications (UC) solution for the new site, the publisher’s internal IT staff had very specific requirements. In researching solutions that might fulfill its needs, the publisher initially approached Motorola directly about its enterprise mobility solutions. In the end, Motorola recommended INSI for the project.

What Are The Capabilities Of Your UC Solution?
According to Lloyd Rochon, CEO of INSI, the publisher specifically was looking for a UC solution that would provide workers with VoIP, two-way walkie-talkie communication, text messaging, email, Internet, and access to line-of-business applications. For its solution, INSI recommended the Motorola TEAM (Total Enterprise Access and Mobility) solution, which fulfilled all of the aforementioned end user requirements of the customer. Rochon explains that the TEAM solution can integrate with many different brands of PBXs, but initially the customer wasn’t sure which PBX it wanted to go with. In the end, the customer chose the Cisco 3845 ISR (integrated services router) with CallManager Express and Unity Express (voice messaging and greeting services).

Additionally, the customer purchased 80 Cisco CP-7945G VoIP phones, 6 Cisco CP-7937G IP conference room phones, 30 Motorola TEAM EWP2100 business smartphones, Motorola WSM (wireless services manager, facilitating handoff between WLAN and cellular networks for contiguous communication), and Motorola NSM (network services manager, providing administration tools). Finally, they also purchased a Sipera Systems IPCS 210 voice intrusion detection and prevention system.

802.11n Can Overcome Many Networking Challenges
To enable all that technology to work, INSI had to plan and implement a wireless network within the facility. Ben Huey, chief security officer for INSI, handled the wireless network aspect of the implementation. “This customer required us to give UC to employees walking anywhere within its 330,000-square-foot facility,” he explains. “Within that facility is basically a huge mass of twisting metal and electronics in the form of printing presses and other machinery.” Due to the size of the building and its contents, INSI had to overcome a host of wireless networking issues.

Huey explains that to get a proper radio footprint in the facility to support VoIP, INSI needed a solution with very low latency, low jitter, and high quality of service. For its solution, the VAR installed two Motorola RFS7000 series wireless switches. “We placed those in full redundancy, creating the network’s wireless backbone,” Huey explains. “For the access points, we deployed 40 Motorola AP-7131 802.11n wireless access points.” Huey continues by explaining that 802.11n was ideal for the facility due to the multipath requirements. Other network equipment includes Cisco Catalyst 3750 switches, Cisco Catalyst 2960 switches, and a Juniper SSG 200 firewall.

When it came to securing the network, INSI chose AirDefense, a wireless intrusion prevention system. Rochon says INSI configured one radio sensor on each Motorola 7131 access point to run as an AirDefense WIPS (wireless intrusion prevention system).

The entire project took two months to complete. For training, INSI had to consider the end users as well as the IT staff. The month-long training for IT staff included topics such as the day-to-day administration of the systems, administering configurations, configuring backup controllers, pushing out configuration changes, and establishing security parameters.

Today, there still are certain aspects of the installation going on. However, according to Rochon, the customer has 50 other facilities that could benefit from similar technology upgrades.