I've been doing a lot of research and writing lately. And I've been talking to a lot of people, ranging from vendors to solution providers to end users. Most of the writing has been book work, or articles on spec for someone, but there are some key success factors that have woven continuously through the thread of conversations.

Readiness assessment is crucial for your VoIP deployment to work. It's still a weak spot. Too often, organizations either mistakenly believe, or accept a salesperson's poor judgement that VoIP will simply work without any changes to the existing network environment. This simply isn't true in most corporate networks.

VoIP is a new application service, with specific performance requirements to make it effective. It's crucial that you assess not just your VoIP needs, but your network's readiness to meet those needs.

Quality of Service (QoS) through MPLS, VLANs and other techniques may well be a make-or-break factor in your success.

Monitoring and management are vital. I've run into several users recently who've skipped the readiness assessment, then implemented without thinking about monitoring and management. So let me be blunt - You failed to ensure your network was ready and able to support converged services. You fail to monitor to ensure acceptable service levels are being met. You haven't deployed management tool that let you quickly engange and remediate problems when they occur. And now you're wondering why your users are saying derogatory things about the new VoIP service?

In deploying VoIP and video in the enterprise network, one thing is certain - we reap what we sow. Methodical planning is the only path to successful deployment and operations.

Deployment, or the implementation phase, is not the end of the road. You have to anticipate and plan how you're going to manage the operational aspects of the convereged network on a day-to-day basis. If you don't, you will feel pain. It will leave a mark.

I don't know how many times I've written and spoken reinforcing this basic requirement. The industry as a whole talks about it all the time. It's surprising how many groups are still missing the point and floundering due to their own attempts at shortcuts.

Shortcuts all have a price. Before you take a shortcut, make sure you know what it will cost you.


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