Pervasive Wireless— Simplifying Change in the Enterprise

“HP and Cisco designed and imple-mented our new, wireless campus, and we are enjoying added flexibility and vast improvements to our opera-ting efficiency.

Deploying new applications and serv-ices as a result of the wireless network has brought us greater benefits. Our new voice-over-IP (VoIP) application has cut costs and enabled us to pro-vide increased service to our staff and students. For example, now staff mem-bers don’t have to travel four hours for meetings at other campuses or incur expensive long-distance charges for conference calls.

What was most surprising was that it all came together in just four weeks without any disruption in service.”

— Yvon Fontaine, President, Université de Moncton

Université de Moncton learns how to use technology to lower costs.

The Université de Moncton’s Edmundston campus adopted a Cisco® HP pervasive wireless solution and have also implemented one of this solution’s many applications, Voice-over-IP (VoIP), to save costs, a perennial challenge in the education sector.

The solution reduces administrative and long-distance costs, eliminates the need for cell phones on campus, and boosts staff productivity and opera-tional efficiencies, both on the Edmundston campus and between other campuses. The university found that working with HP and Cisco gave them the complete solution with two industry powerhouses. As systems integrator and prime contractor, HP Canada tapped its expertise with Cisco technolo-gies in planning and managing the implementation, as well as providing training and support. The transition from traditional Telco phone service to telephony took just four weeks and resulted in an anticipated return on investment (ROI) of $750K CAD over a five-year period, with even more savings if the other campuses adopt the technology as well.

Founded in 1963, the Université de Moncton [http://www.umoncton.ca] is a French-language university based in Moncton, New Brunswick, serving the Acadian community of Atlantic Canada. The Université de Moncton includes campuses in Edmundston and Shippagan in addition to the Moncton campus. The Université de Moncton’s Edmundston campus, in northern New Brunswick, hosts hundreds of students each year with about 100 of them living on campus.

Like most universities, Université de Moncton’s Edmundston campus con-tinually looks for ways to improve operating efficiencies and save money. According to Jocelyn Nadeau, IT director for the Université de Moncton’s Edmundston campus, Telco and cell-phone charges represented some of the university’s biggest operating costs.

Prior to implementing the wireless solution and VoIP, The Université de Moncton’s Edmundston campus incurred considerable long-distance charges whenever a staff member needed to talk to anyone at the administrative headquarters campus in Moncton, about four-and-a-half hours away. While conference calls between campuses were expensive, they became the solu-tion of choice, given that the university’s three campuses in New Brunswick are so far from each other.

In addition to high long-distance charges, the university sought to reduce numerous other ‘add- on’ fees. For example, Mr. Nadeau commented, “Whenever a staff member needed to move a phone from one cube to the next, which hap-pened frequently, the Telco charged us anywhere from $90 to $120 per move. That adds up. What’s more, the Telco charged for other add-on services, such as conference calling and voice-mail storage.”

Cell-phone fees represented yet another major expense. Whether moving around the Edmundston campus or traveling to other cam-puses, staff required cell phones to maintain communications. Mr. Nadeau decided a VoIP solution was needed to mitigate these consider-able costs and sought the services of trusted solution providers for help.

Turning to Trusted Solution Providers: Cisco and HPSince 1999, the university had been successfully using Cisco networking equipment that proved very reliable over time. According to the univer-sity IT department, they haven’t had any signifi-cant failures and the only reason they chose to replace equipment was to upgrade or enhance older switches.

During the summer of 2005, the university decided to replace its older Catalyst® Switches with the latest Cisco chassis solutions with redundancy, and upgrade the internetworking operating system (IOS®). Feeling unsure about the process, Mr. Nadeau sought the services of HP Canada to oversee the implementation. “We received professional services in a friendly and courteous manner. So when it came time for the IP telephony project, we considered the Cisco HP Alliance a front runner among companies bidding for the project.”

The university carefully considered the bids that came in and their final decision came down to three Cisco partners, one of them HP Canada. They found that other partners had limited experience in the market implementing VoIP solu-tions. They could offer few references, whereas HP Canada had multiple people to handle the integration and numerous examples of successful implementations.

The university also had a good experience working with HP Canada previously, which gave credibility and confidence that they were the right company to contract for the job. Mr. Nadeau says, “Our experience with HP Canada historically was very positive. The Cisco HP team was the front runner in quality of equipment and service, but they also came in lower in price, which weighed heavily in our decision.”

The transition from Telco to IP telephony took the university just four weeks, as HP Canada had proposed; saving weeks, if not months worth of fees from the university’s local phone provider.

The Edmundston campus represents the first campus at Université de Moncton to replace its phone system with IP telephony throughout.

The IP phones include XML browsers, which translate templates, such as those for setting up a personal address book, from English to French, to meet the University’s language needs. Phones can provide one-touch dialing for staff and students to the most frequently used numbers and can display a logo to graphically represent the party being dialed.

Training and Support Ensure a Seamless ImplementationWorking with both HP Canada’s Consulting and Integration Services and Education Services, the university received 25 days of onsite training to ensure everyone understood how to use and move phones. Paul Albert, vice president at the Edmundston campus, says, “The HP technical staff is very well trained on Cisco’s equipment and was able to get us almost instantaneous access to Cisco’s technical staff to resolve prob-lems and get solutions for our specific needs. In the same way, the HP sales team, with its close relationship to Cisco, was able to help us rapidly get equipment that we missed or forgot to order, as well as get quick replacement for parts and equipment.”

Productivity and Operational Efficiency Boosts The university no longer pays to move a phone from one location/office to another. And thanks to the installation of a gateway at the Moncton campus, long-distance calls initiated through the University intranet connecting the Edmundston and Moncton campuses are now treated as local calls. Mr. Nadeau states, “This setup allows us to call staff at Moncton without an IP phone by bypassing the Telco’s long distance service.”

Paul Albert also appreciates that Cisco’s IP Communicator allows staff members who travel or work from home to continue to enjoy the ben-efits of VoIP. He says, “Having recently blanketed the campus with wireless access, using Cisco (APs) access points also means that users with portable computers or wireless Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) based on Windows Mobile can receive phone calls wirelessly anywhere on campus. Now, the technical and security staff can be reached using the same four-digit exten-sion, whether they are in their office, elsewhere on campus, or anywhere in the world where they have Internet access.”

With training from HP, the university can imple-ment the remaining roll-out of the new, central-ized system itself. Instead of paying monthly Centrex costs for voice mail, moves, add-ons, changes (MACs) and other services, the univer-sity can manage those responsibilities internally.

Since going live last April, the university is pleased to report they have not experienced a single failure.

“The system has been running smoothly. The transition was almost transparent, except for a few hiccups mainly due to the local phone provider not understanding our exact needs. Users are happy with the system, and are enjoy-ing many free services they used to have to pay extra for, such as multiple lines, call waiting, even hold music,” says Mr. Nadeau.

Next on the HorizonVP and senior executives at other Université de Moncton campuses may soon have video phones for conference calls and intercampus communication. Video telephony will reduce travel cost and fatigue for staff that regularly have to travel to Moncton. “We are currently looking at giving those people either a video-phone or a Cisco Unified Video Advantage system. We are only in the experimental phase, but it looks promising.”

Mr. Nadeau hopes the next step will be for the university’s two other campuses to transition to all-VoIP, as well. “That would be the best way for each of us to maximize savings.”

Challenges• The IP telephony needed to be offered to staff

members and students housed in the local resi-dence in French only, although other applica-tions were bilingual.

• Ensure proper quality-of-service (QoS) mecha-nism is in place to provide guaranteed voice over data service.

• IP telephony infrastructure must be secured against the existing computing environment.

• The IP telephony solution needed to provide outgoing fax, incoming dialup and video con-ferencing services, as well as providing for toll bypass to the Université de Moncton campus.

• The IP telephony solution needed to utilize VPN client capabilities and “soft phone” technology to allow for seamless office interac-tion while administration staff and professors travel.

• The IP telephony needed to interact with the Residence’s Mircom Telephone Access System.

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Results/Benefits:• Expected ROI for Université de Moncton over a five-year period will be $750,000 CAD, with a

$300,000 CAD investment realizing a $200,000 CAD return per year.

• Instituted a wireless campus for students and staff, eliminating the need for cell phones on campus.

• Provided point-to-point VoIP to other campuses. VP and senior executives are experimenting with video phones, eliminating the need to travel to other campuses for meetings.

• 25 days of on-site consulting and training was provided.

• Centralized IP telephony solution improves operational efficiency and management.

Solution Components• HP delivered a full suite of consulting services, including design, configuration, integration,

and training.

• HP provided the IP telephony and security hardware in partnership with Cisco Systems®.

• HP built the IP telephony system on the existing Cisco network infrastructure after implementing QoS and Cisco ASA security solution to exceed customer requirements. Cisco voice gateways were implemented for PSTN connectivity and for toll bypass to Moncton, and Cisco video IP phones were installed for adhoc video conferencing.

• HP configured the Cisco ASA solution for VPN Client capabilities to allow mobile users to access resources securely and to utilize Cisco IP Communicator phones while traveling.

HardwareThe solution included Cisco’s CallManagers, Unity® Voice Messaging, ISR 2800 Series Voice Gate-way/VPN devices, VG 224 Analog/IP Gateway, ATAs, ASA 5520 Failover bundle, and several Cisco IP phone models, including IP Video Phone 7985s and IP Wireless Phone 7920s.

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