Converged Network, VoIP Projects Tax IT Managers

Computerworld - BOSTON -- As vice president of voice product development at Merrill Lynch & Co., Todd Goodyear has weathered six complicated years of converging voice and data communications on an IP network.
Goodyear said at last week's Fall 2005 Voice on the Net conference here that he and other network managers at Merrill Lynch are working on a seven-year plan that was designed to set a strategic direction for the convergence effort. But he noted that the plan has had to be adjusted to accommodate new technologies, unexpected problems and changing demands from end users and business managers.
"It's been a tough process," Goodyear said. He added that the standing joke among members of his staff is that they have been located on the first floor of an office building in New Jersey so they won't fall too far if they jump.
Many Changes
Merrill Lynch has made some well-publicized changes in its technology plans as part of the project. In 2003, for example, the company chose a hybrid IP and circuit-switched system from Avaya Inc. to replace a Cisco Systems Inc. voice-over-IP system at some of its operations in New York and New Jersey.
Then, last year, Merrill Lynch once again turned to Cisco. In a deal that Cisco announced last February, Merrill Lynch opted to use the vendor's VoIP technology to support 14,000 financial advisers at 600 branch offices nationwide. The end result is a mix of pure VoIP and hybrid technologies, Goodyear said during a presentation at the conference. He noted that the company is dealing with three primary vendors: Avaya, Cisco and Nortel Networks Corp.
In addition, the vendors have been updating their software and hardware more often than expected -- about two releases a year instead of one every 18 months. That means the team working on the project has had to react to changes faster than anticipated, said Goodyear.
Bruce Sennecke, a procurement specialist for voice and data technology at Allstate Insurance Co. in Northbrook, Ill., said he has experienced some of the same problems while helping to set up VoIP systems for the insurer over the past two years.
The biggest problem has been getting an accurate inventory of how much equipment is needed across such a large organization, he said. About 10,000 of Allstate's 70,000 workers have access to VoIP services.
Both Sennecke and Goodyear also cautioned that IT staffs need to be prepared for end users who want to keep their old phone sets. "The user resistance [can be] unbelievable," Sennecke said.
David Steen, CEO of Teleplus Consulting Inc. in Eden Prairie, Minn., said that despite the high level of interest in VoIP projects, IT managers need to carefully monitor costs and potential paybacks when starting a project.
"Sometimes the economics on VoIP don't work," he said.