An integrated communications infrastructure gives Virginia Commonwealth University a foundation to build upon.

A tradition of excellence at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU; www.vcu.edu) is the largest university in Virginia and ranks among the top 100 universities in the country in sponsored research. Located on two downtown campuses in Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 30,000 students in nearly 200 certificate and degree programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-three of the pro­grams are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU’s 15 schools and one college.

The Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center is one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. It comprises the university’s health sciences schools, the 780-bed Medical College of Virginia hospitals and outpatient clinics, and MCV Physicians—a 600-physician-faculty group practice. The VCU Medical Center, through its VCU Health System, offers state-of-the-art care in more than 200 specialty areas and offers nearly every form of contemporary medical service.

Growing pains give way to focus on expansion
As a large institution with a broad range of constituents—from students and school administrators to research­ers, medical staff, patients and their families—the communications infra­structure required to support VCU and the VCU Health System is exten­sive, complex and demanding as it strives to meet the institution’s core mission.

In recent years, the VCU and VCU Health System telecommunica­tions infrastructure began to show its age and needed an upgrade. It included obsolete Key System Units and Centrex-based phone lines with no centralized management. Many of the 17,000 phones connected to the infrastructure were more than 20 years old. Replacement parts for the mix of installed technologies were becoming increasingly scarce, and qualified ser­vice technicians were difficult to find and retain in house. Although basic call management features had been pro­vided to end users, advanced features, such as unified messaging and cen­tralized management of phones at the desktop, were not available. The aging system had also created roadblocks to providing top-level customer service, a key performance objective. Basic moves, adds and changes (MACs) to phones required close coordination with the local communications provider and often required sending a technician to the campus site to navigate a maze of cables and switches.

But the biggest drawback to the exist­ing communications infrastructure was its cost. As the service agent between the telecommunications carrier and the many departments within the university and healthcare systems, VCU Technol­ogy Services operates on a chargeback model, passing on the cost of services, support and maintenance overhead to the departments. Because each line for the Centrex system was leased from a telecommunications carrier, the leased-line cost for the entire system was approximately US$4 million annually.

“The cost savings that we predicted we could gain by significantly reducing the lines we leased were a major factor in the decision to move forward,” says Bill Jones, project manager for the VCU Advanced Communications for Enterprise Services (ACES) Project, the communications upgrade initiated by VCU Technology Services.

Moving to a converged communications solution to meet the challenges
After a rigorous planning and proposal process that drew a significant number of responses from providers locally and nationwide, VCU Technology Ser­vices selected IBM Global Technology Services and Avaya to provide the turn­key, end-to-end solution for a converged communications environment that would modernize the telephony infrastructure. The converged voice and data solution leverages a combination of traditional telephony and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to provide the optimal mix of reliability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness that VCU and the VCU Health System demanded.

“We were definitely looking for someone with a long telephony background and strong IP networking experience with a robust support structure behind them,” says Jones. “We wanted a company that could draw in resources as we needed them. This obviously was going to be a major project for us, and IBM was the strong partner we needed to pull it off.”

VCU Technology Services selected Avaya Communication Manager as the foundation for the new infrastruc­ture because of its expandability and ability to be integrated with existing Avaya modular messaging and auto­matic call distributor (ACD) investments. The hybrid Internet Protocol (IP) private branch exchange (PBX) can support the mix of Avaya IP softphones, digi­tal phones and legacy analog phones that will be in place until migration is completed. The server also offers expand­ability to up to 36,000 end points.

The transition to converged communi­cations prompted a complete redesign of the existing IP data network and the replacement or upgrade of more than 2,000 switches and routers. This was accomplished in house by VCU Technology Services with consulting and design services from IBM.

IBM Global Technology Services pro­vided all of the implementation services necessary for the project, including:
• Sizing and configuring the system
• Procuring and initially installing the Avaya switch equipment
• Rewiring and cabling campus sites
• Integrating messaging applications and the 911 system
• Training technology staff on system administration
• Placing the phones on desktops
• Communicating project milestones to end users and administrators
• Training end users
• Providing overall program management.

The migration from the old system to the new one was a complex and detailed 14-week process for each group of approximately 400 users. Much of the work was performed behind the scenes, limiting impact to end users.

“I’m very happy that we’ve had a very competent team to call upon,” says Jones. “Everyone we’ve worked with has shown appropriate concern with moving the project forward and resolv­ing the inevitable issues that come up with such a large project to the best interests of everyone involved. Having the right resources to call upon has been responsible for our success today.”

Lowering costs and improving services to end users
Although the project is well under way and the new infrastructure is installed, replacing 13,000 phones is no small task and is expected to be completed in late 2007. Still, as IBM rolls out the IP phones to the desktops, the initial response from end users has been posi­tive, says Jones, and users are happy to have a set of similar phones—IP and digital—that are simple to use and can be adopted throughout the system. IBM has also provided training, documenta­tion and follow-up support to help end users become comfortable with their full functionality and new features, allowing VCU Technology Services to focus on more strategic tasks.

In addition to new phones with enhanced features, end users will also enjoy new levels of service that VCU Technology Services couldn’t provide before. The turnaround time for MAC activities has been drastically reduced, from about two weeks to one business day for most tasks, as a result of the newly centralized management and the ability to make changes without visiting users’ offices.

The new system has also eliminated the need for one-time deployment charges for putting a phone on the desk. Under the old system, there were handset costs, line fees, fees to set up voicemail and maintenance charges—costs that quickly added up. Eliminating these charges and rolling them into the monthly per-line fee has simplified the VCU Technology Services billing process and allowed departments to establish more predict-able budgets. Most departments have seen reduced costs with the new system.

Jones estimates a 50 percent reduction in carrier costs gained by eliminating the leased lines. He also estimates that the cost savings will quickly cover the expense of the project in only five or six years. Once the project is paid for, chargebacks to VCU departments could go down, or they could be reinvested in additional features and other projects.

Ongoing management and mainte-nance support, provided as part of the solution from IBM, will further reduce costs while providing system custom-ers with more reliable and responsive service. The improved management capabilities of the system also have allowed VCU Technology Services to improve its project management discipline in the organization, while enhancing its own efficiency and governance through improvements in change management processes and clearer documentation of the entire infrastructure.

Creating a foundation for future communications improvements
Although the initial impetus for the project was to reduce costs and improve an aging infrastructure, the ACES Project will have far-reaching impact because it provides a foun­dation for future advances and cost savings. In the future, VCU will likely use the IP network for videoconferencing and expanded VoIP capabilities to reduce long-distance charges and support remote-education initiatives.

"The voice project necessitated a network upgrade that was badly needed and that’s going to benefit us in many other ways," says Jones. "It’s going to help us improve our security posture, offer new services, and support enhanced collaboration on our campuses and with other insti­tutions. This project is really pushing us to a next-generation network that will have long-term benefits."

Like VCU, clients worldwide are using IBM’s data and integration expertise and Avaya’s voice and intelligent communications expertise to take advantage of the strategic and operational advantages of inte­grated business communications. Integrated communications solu­tions from IBM and Avaya provide the software, technologies, service capabilities and applications that can help enterprise clients connect, com­municate, collaborate and improve business processes.