The Role of High Availability Software in Quality of Service Joe McFadden Vice President, Marketing,...

The Role of High Availability Software in Quality of

ServiceJoe McFaddenVice President, Marketing, Nuasis

IP Migration Urban LegendsFact or Fiction?

“VoIP sacrifices voice quality”VoIP on a managed network with QoS is high quality; VoIP on the

open Internet may not be

“My network isn’t ready for VoIP”

Many enterprise routers are enabled with QoS and only need to change configuration settings

“VoIP solutions aren’t reliable”The network needs to be reliable, but some VoIP applications can recover from network failures

“VoIP solutions aren’t secure”Security can be achieved – as part of an overall enterprise network security strategy

Telecom manager sleeping well at night

Call Center manager sleeping well at night

CEO in the box and sleeping well at night

All of the above

Call Center 101 QuizMission-critical performance on an IP

network

Is it…?

• Measured in component uptime and service availability• CO services were / are hardened

o CO was responsibleo Distributed network to address outageso CO-based equipment redundancy

• ACD switches designed for higher uptime performanceo Hardware was hardened to meet uptime specificationso Distributed trunking at the switch was / is a standardo Hot standby redundancyo Digital technology led to battery backup

TDM World: 99.999% UptimeCall Center System Availability

Expectations

PSTN ACD

ACDACD

ACD

Call Center Telephony Network

•Vendors met 99.999% of uptime as a rule•But…

o Based on business hours of operationo Excluding downtime during maintenance windowso Not measured across the entire network of

systemso If more than 25% of trunks were out of serviceo Does it include other media channels and

integration components

•Did we really deliver 99.999%

Historical PerformanceGenerally, we’ve slept well at night

ACD

ACD

ACDPSTN ACD

Call Center Telephony Network

CTI Hardware and Middleware

CTI Hardware and Middleware

CTI Hardware and Middleware

CTI Hardware and Middleware

ThirdIntegration

Layer

E-mail Center

Internet WANWeb Collab

CRMDatabase

WANCorporate LAN/WAN

DSL

WAN

CRMDatabase

TDM World: 99.999% Uptime ???

Call Center System Availability Expectations

•Across a network of sites and systems•That considers multiple media channels•That takes advantage of inherent advantages of the IP infrastructure

New Metric: 100% Contact Recovery

Mission-critical performance on an IP network

InternetWAN

CRMDatabase

Corporate LAN/WAN

DSL

WANIP ContactCenter &IVR

Single Network IP Architecture Software application architecture simplifies the model

WAN

PSTN

• Is IP really that much different than TDM?o Distributed architecture for inherent component redundancyo Server hardware configured for fail safe and remote accesso Software applications distributed across multiple serverso Redundant serverso UPS power backup

• Built on a single network – corporate IP networko Fewer components and points of failure

• Innovations: SIP Gateway with automatic call re-direct

Node

SecurityAppliance

Collaboration Server

EmailRelay

Corp Web Servers

DMZ

Voice Gateways

Email Server

Application Server

Voice Server

Database Server

Hub

Application server

Voice Server

F/W F/W

Reports Server

Node

*

*

*

*n+1 scalable

New Metric -- 100% Contact RecoveryMission-critical reliability on an IP network

On-site Spare

Corporate Data Network

ACDIVRPBX

Design Considerations for an IP Contact Center

Examine each segment of the path

• PSTN component hasn’t changed• Pure IP software (vs. hybrid TDM / IP) can reduce the points of

failure• Distribute the trunking to minimize impact of a single voice

gateway failure• Distribute call center applications across multiple servers

optimizing for voice connections• Provide redundancy for application-critical components• Monitor voice path for interruptions and re-direct