How to Maximize Your Unified Communications Return on Investment

I preach all of the time that I believe a well-executed Unified Communications strategy can significantly transform a business. Effective communications and collaboration can increase an organization’s velocity, trim inefficiencies and drive accuracy. A poorly implemented UC solution is simply expensive and frustrating.

The simple truth is that if you’re unwilling to use UC technologies fully, invest the time to be effective with the features, and plan for the transformation across your co-workers, you’re probably not going to get the ROI that’s been promised.

Like any other transformative technology, there are some steps you can take that will help maximize your ROI.

1. Define your Expectations – figure out how you communicate and document what tools, applications and method you’re using. This is critical when developing your “use case” scenarios. Knowing what you need (or what you’re hoping for) is critical in the planning stage.

2. Identify your ROI Model – determining your ROI is all about quantifying the results. What are your old costs and revenues based on your “old way” of communication? Next, figure out what’s going to be impacted when you shift to a UC strategy. Is video conferencing going to save on travel? Do old tools or systems go away? Identifying each impact will plug into your ROI model.

3. Organize Your Workforce – Within IT, UC will consolidate networks, servers, storage, etc. This is going to realign both your equipment and your teams. Organizations with separate telecommunications or video conferencing resources can most likely be consolidated. Your UC design team should address all of the involved areas.

4. Clean Up Your House – Your network may need to be updated to handle UC. A poor network foundation unable to handle to demands of a UC environment will leave your users in the cold. Invest the time and resources up front to be ready. Rolling out UC on an antiquated network will spell disaster.

5. Don’t Think Bandwidth Will Fix Everything – It’s the quality of your network, not your network bandwidth, that will spell success. We see businesses all the time that think a bigger pipe will solve their problems. Network performance is addressed at the core. Failing to address quality will only hide your problems and are devilishly complex to fix after a UC deployment is completed.

6. Test Before you Go Live – take the time to map out the logical and physical paths that your UC traffic will follow. Make sure those pathways can handle the increase load and still deliver the quality of service you expect. Many UC deployments have gone awry because no one took the time to test the architecture. A good test plan will allow you to tune prior to “go live”. Remember, your users aren’t going to tolerate much tweaking and tuning, so get it right before they see it.

Tim Krueger, PEI

Are Managed IT services right for you?

Not all businesses need managed services, and some may only require elements of a full managed service package. Each organization will have different reasons for considering additional support in the form of a managed service. Here is a list of some of the more common reasons organizations are looking for additional support for their IT staff.

• Lessen the impact of losing experienced support staff.

• Make optimal use of existing resources by reducing pressure on existing staff.

• Focus on business rather than IT support tasks.

• Better cost control and clarity on IT return on investment.

• Improved business efficiency through focused use of resources.

• Transfer risk for meeting and exceeding high service delivery targets.

• Improved processes by introduction of best practices and standards.

A well planned managed service offering can help address the gaps in your IT strategy and its execution, helping to resolve business challenges and pain points.

Additional benefits include:

• Proactive monitoring and management

• 24×7 maintenance support

• Continuous life-cycle management including: configuration management, service upgrades (adds, moves, changes), and service evolution planning

• Fault management

• Performance management and reporting

Whether your business just needs assistance with the basics, like monitoring and patching, or something more extensive like weekly staff augmentation, there are many options that can be customized to suite an organizations specific needs. A managed service offering may be a great way to fill in the gaps!

Jon A. Eyberg, PEI

Confirmed Fit Sales Strategy

A sales strategy that can be employed in certain circumstances and one I have used on several occasions is what is commonly called a Confirmed Fit engagement. In a Confirmed Fit we combine the steps of internal requirements gathering, vendor demonstration surveys, proof of concept, and implementation surveys into a single pass through the organization. The Vendor organization would deliver a fully staffed team of experts to work on-site through the Confirmed Fit process.

The deliverables for the Confirm Fit are:

• Detailed Implementation Proposal
• Project Plan & Timeline
• Software/Hardware Configuration
• License and/or On Demand Proposal
• Business Case Analysis (if necessary)

The deliverables are not altogether different from what would be delivered in a more traditional evaluation that includes an RFP, RFI, RFQ or others. It’s really the process and benefits that are different which include:

• Discount: The vendor would typically match any previously negotiated customer discount percentage. This process can take weeks to work through with a new vendor.
• Terms & Conditions: The vendor will match previously negotiated business terms for the contract.
• Compressed Timeline: The Vendor is typically prepared to deliver a test environment for the customer’s implementation team within a compressed time frame.
• Resource Commitment: will deliver a full team on-site at no cost to work through the Confirm Fit. (See below proposed team)

In exchange for the above, the prospect agrees to not issue an RFP or bring in competitive vendor solutions while engaged with the subject Vendor. If the prospect determines through the Confirmed Fit engagement that the vendor is not the right solution than clearly, the parties dis-engage and part ways as friends. However, commitment to this process from the prospect’s management and executive staff is required. Additionally, there is no legal involvement or binding contracts. It is typically a ‘handshake’ agreement with pre-defined timeframes, responsibilities, and milestones.

Matt Teahan, PEI

CMC R3 New Features and Improvements

As part of our ever growing effort to provide the best service possible, we would like to share with you some of the newest improvements to our Managed And Monitoring system as well as some enhancements that are on the way. With the R3 release we now have a Power Management option that allows us to track power consumption by your equipment. This allows us to see where money is being wasted in your environment, by running scripts to turn unused items off or even just determine bad power supplies that need to be replaced.

Another new advantage is that we can now monitor cloud services. We can manage your Google Docs or Office 365 implementations right from Service Center. Admin tasks like adding and removing users or resetting passwords can all be done by PEI in one convenient place.

One of the biggest improvements is the way we remote into your systems. We used to need an outside IP or even a VPN set up to allow us access to your systems. With our new Remote Tools, a PEI engineer can remotely connect into your devices through our Service Center securely and quickly. With this new enhancement, and engineer can securely access your devices from anywhere. This ensures that we are able to provide prompt and emergency service as quickly as possible.

As your environments continue to grow and evolve, you can trust PEI to do the same right along side so that we can continue to support your growing companies needs.

Loss of SCCM 2007 / FEP 2010 Policies

If you run into the issue that I did after enabling FEP2010 into SCCM 2007, that you lose access to the polices screen after building them, here is the simple solution to correct the issue.

• Make sure that your SCCM is SP2 and R3 first.

• Re-download KB2271736 from here – http://hotfixv4.microsoft.com/SCCM%202007/sp2/SCCM2007_SP2_KB2271736_ENU/4.0.6487.2156/free/417750_ENU_i386_zip.exe

• Rename the microsoft.configurationmanagement.managementprovider.dll located under \Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Configuration Manager Console\AdminUI\BIN\ to “microsoft.configurationmanagement.managementprovider.old”

• Reboot the SCCM server

• Reinstall the KB2271736 hotfix, ensuring it installs successfully.

• Relaunch the SCCM console

• Viola, you are back up and running into the policies screen.

Sam Westfall, PEI

Microsoft Lync and Microsoft Exchange 2010 UM integration

There are a lot of other resources out there that will tell you how to integrate Exchange UM with Microsoft Lync. This blog isn’t going to cover this aspect. It is covering another issue, transferring calls from an UM Auto-attendant to another extension, say a Subscriber Access number. Here is the scenario:

Client has limited amounts of DIDs, so all users use the tel:+1xxxyyyzzzz;ext=aaaa format. They have a single DID that is going to be used for an auto-attendant. They still want a Subscriber Access number, but to have it as an extension versus a DID. The extension used for the Subscriber Access number is +2999. I could not use the format above as it is 21 characters and Exchange 2010 UM has a limit of 20 characters (figures ). When you call into the AA, you press “8” or say “Subscriber Access” to be transferred. The transfers would fail to the Subscriber Access number. Transfers to users (entering extensions and/or saying their name worked every time, but transfers to Subscriber Access failed. Here’s why:

Exchange 2007 UM

First let’s cover the “old” days of OCS R2 and/or Lync integration with Exchange 2007 UM. In the past you had to have your dial-plans match exactly or the integration would fail. Example would be Lync dial-plan of “Test123.local.com”. The dial-plan you create on Exchange would need to be exactly the same “Test123.local.com” or the integration would fail. This is because when a call would come into Exchange 2007 and the call was being transferred to a user and/or another number, it would append the “Test123.local.com” to the “phone-context=” in the INVITE. Lync would see this and handle the call appropriately.

Exchange 2010 UM

With Exchange 2010 the above Exchange 2007 rules no longer apply. You no longer need the dial-plans in Lync and Exchange to match in order for the UM integration to function properly. Why? Well, Microsoft changed the way the calls are transferred. Instead of appending the “phone-context=” with the dial-plan name, it sends the calls with “phone-context=user-default@domainname.com”. This is a great change, but there is a caveat.

Caveat

The problem with the above is when the INVITE is sent using the default dial-plan, Lync matches the Global dial-plan. Some people configure the Global dial-plan, others like more personalized or easily identifiable dial-plans. So they leave the default configuration of the Global dial-plan. If you are using E.164, then this isn’t a problem as the default normalization rule prefixes a “+” to the numbers coming in. Everything and everyone is happy. In this particular installation, this wouldn’t work as the call coming in wasn’t matching the default rules and Lync was giving errors in the translation logging that it found a matching number, but it was in a different dial-plan, and the transfer would fail.

Resolution

To make the transfers work, I needed to modify the normalization rules of the Global dial-plan to match the incoming “2999” number and normalize it too “+2999”. This worked. I know I could have given a bogus E.164 (+15555552999) number instead of using a 4-digit extension, but we didn’t for other reasons.

Emilio Rivera, PEI

Microsoft Lync A/V Authentication Issue

In one of our most recent Lync implementations we ran into some issues of long post-dial-delay (PDD) on internal, external (Federated or Edge) and PSTN calls. The PDD was in the range of 8-10 seconds consistently. After troubleshooting, tracing packets, and pulling logs we found the issue. The issue was between the A/V Authentication service (living on the Edge server on an internal DMZ) and the Front End and Mediation servers (collocated). One of the required ports for TURN/STUN was not being allowed. All other ports were allowed, but port 443 was not specifically allowed. So – if you are experiencing long PDD delays on inbound and outbound calls, verify your firewall rules. The root cause of the issue was a typo in the access policy on the firewall. Fun experience and always a great way to remember to CHECK THE BASICS FIRST!

Emilio Rivera, PEI

Intune 2

If you don’t currently have an Microsoft Enterprise agreement, or you can’t afford a System Center Configuration Manager server, perhaps you should pick up Microsoft’s Intune product.

For a minimal monthly cost per PC, this software offers a great deal of control & reporting to your existing environment. Did I mention that this product also offers a 30 day free trial for 25 systems, and a wealth of free documentation as well.

From simple Microsoft application deployment to remote assistance, Intune offers a great central management platform for smaller companies, or a good entry level product similar to SCCM. This product offers some great core functionality in the forms of process security fixes, and other updates, alerting with things go awry, view of per PC software inventories, reporting, software deployments over the internet connections, and other admin duties.

An overview can be found here – http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windowsintune/try-and-buy.aspx#_try

Sam Westfall, PEI

TMG (Threat Management Gateway) and Windows Update Error 0x80072f8f

You’ve just installed Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) and then head off to install Windows Updates to make sure everything is up to date, when you see the nasty red X and the indecipherable error code: 0x80072f8f.

Never fear, this is simply an indication that TMG, being a firewall, is blocking the Windows Update traffic. To resolve, you just need to tell Windows to use TMG as a proxy. From an elevated command prompt, run:

netsh winhttp set proxy localhost:8080

And then run Windows Update again.

Shane Skriletz , PEI

FBI Crack down on DNSChanger Malware, Six arrested in Estonia

The DNSChanger Trojan quietly alters DNS settings on affected machines allowing the hijackers to redirect web traffic on affected hosts. It is said to still be present on an estimated 500,000 machines in the United States.

The FBI recently, in co-operation with Estonian authorities, arrested six men suspected of developing and managing the Trojan software. The arrests took place in co-ordination with seizure of the DNSChanger infrastructure.

The DNSChanger servers are being used as regular DNS resolvers for the time being to ensure working services to those infected. Infected computers should be moved to regular DNS servers before the FBI scheduled the shutdown of the infrastructure on March 8th.

The FBI has produced a corresponding document explaining how to tell if you are infected and the actions you can take: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/november/malware_110911/DNS-changer-malware.pdf.

Mitch Mahan, PEI