Challenges
• User needs across the
university environment
vary widely, as does
the technology
infrastructure across
departments.
• UW wanted a single
solution in its core
that would work with
whatever departments
already had in place
and would deploy in
the future.
University of Washington Moves
Toward Ubiquitous Unified
Communications
Avaya Aura® the Foundation for Anytime,
Anywhere Communication
• UW’s outdated
telecom infrastructure,
hardware and software
were not equipped
to handle nextgeneration trends and
applications such as
mobility, BYOD,
Voice-over-IP and
video conferencing.
Value Created
• Avaya Aura lowers the
total cost of ownership
because the network
infrastructure is
shared, rather than
being duplicated.
• A shared infrastructure
reduces IT
management, and
maintenance time
and costs.
• The core is compatible
with departments’
existing infrastructure –
avoiding costly
replacement – or
whatever departments
choose to deploy in
the future.
Home to some of the world’s leading
companies, Seattle is a hotbed of
innovation. And the state’s flagship
university, the University of Washington
(UW), plays a major part in helping
shape tomorrow’s leaders.
UW serves more students than any
other institution in the Northwest —
more than 51,000 annually. The
university spans three academic
campuses, in Seattle, Tacoma and
Bothell, and a world-class medical
center. UW also recently ranked eighth
among public universities nationally.
UW Information Technology (UW-IT)
is centrally responsible for keeping
the university at the forefront of
technology – not an easy job with such a
large student population, 31,570 faculty
and staff members, 30,000 phone lines
and more than 500 buildings. Users’
needs range from basic desktop
requirements to high-volume call center
operations. As trends like mobility and
BYOD grow, so does the challenge.
UW-IT effectively serves as a consultant
to campus departments. Departments
are free to work with outside providers if
they choose, but UW-IT aims to meet as
many of their needs as possible to keep
UW on the leading edge.
A Vision for Anywhere,
Any Device
Communications
When Roland Rivera joined UW-IT in
2010, he saw an opportunity to take
UW’s communications into the 21st
Century. At the time, the outdated
telecom infrastructure, hardware and
software were not adequate for nextgeneration trends and applications such
as mobility, BYOD, Voice-over-IP and
video conferencing.
avaya.com | 1
“The industry is moving away from
separate voice and data services, and
integration is everywhere,” Rivera
said. “The UW vision is to provide
users with ubiquitous unified
communications (UC), whether from
a mobile device, desktop PC or a
high-end conferencing system.”
Rivera envisioned university staff and
faculty seamlessly communicating
through a variety of devices including
smartphones, tablets, PCs, Macs,
and conference room video systems.
This would take provisioning of
communications services in the cloud,
accessible through whatever device
the user chooses. To get there, UW
needed to lay the foundation for a
unified communications infrastructure
that would support departments’
current and future IT environments.
Avaya Aura for a
Flexible Core
UW-IT embarked on a multi-year
effort to migrate to a unified
communications infrastructure to
support new, collaborative
applications, increase network
efficiency and reduce cost. Because
of the diverse nature of technology
across departments, interoperability
was critical. UW-IT had to support a
multi-vendor environment, but
wanted to deploy a single solution in
its core to simplify administration.
With the choice of core technology so
pivotal, UW-IT conducted a wellplanned and thorough pilot. The team
requested roadmaps from vendors
that ranked highest in Gartner’s Magic
Quadrant.
The team fully tested three solutions,
trying their integration capabilities on
a small scale for applications such as
instant messaging, telephony, video
conferencing, unified messaging, and
web collaboration. Only the Avaya
Aura Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP)-based platform met all the
university’s needs for a core unified
communications system. In the pilot,
Avaya proved its flexibility, working
with diverse vendors such as
Microsoft Lync, AVST, Cisco, and
Polycom.
“Avaya Aura was superior in terms
of opens standards, integration
capabilities and session control
compared to other vendors,” Rivera
said. “The pilot gave us the confidence
to put Avaya Aura into our core.”
Additionally, Avaya Aura provides
much-needed survivability. UW can
deploy and tie together multiple
session managers and create greater
geo-redundancy.
10 Tips for a UC Deployment
Rivera shares his lessons learned and best practices from the university’s multi-year journey to
unified communications.
1.
Plan well - Develop a vision, create a plan, define the budget, run a proof of concept and implement
the plan.
2. Learn from peers – UW-IT conferred extensively with peers and Avaya subject matter experts through the Avaya conferences and the International Avaya Users Group (IAUG). “We had fruitful discussions that allowed us to modify our approach and gave us assurance that our architecture is
viable and valid,” Rivera said.
3. Team with the CFO and data networking group – Ensure the budget includes new maintenance/
depreciation and training, perform a thorough network readiness assessment and train telecom staff.
4. Consider convergence – Think ahead when upgrading to VoIP. Network convergence is not for the
timid.
5. Establish multiple tiers of service – Develop Premium UC services that can fully leverage a converged network, and Best-Effort services to accommodate locations that cannot immediately
upgrade their legacy network infrastructure.
6. Embrace a vendor-independent architecture – Interoperability was critical to support departments’
diverse needs.
7.
Prepare the network - Ensure the wired and wireless networks are ready for UC and wireless IP phones.
8. Enable phone forwarding – Allow users to receive simultaneous rings on multiple IT-enabled devices.
9. Phase the project – Dividing the project into four phases reduces risk. UW also built the budget for
each phase and maintenance into the annual budget.
10. Create user profiles – Develop profiles and usage scenarios that anticipate the needs of end users.
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| avaya.com
A Multi-Year Rollout
UW-IT took a systematic, phased
approach to evolving its architecture.
The team developed a detailed design
with state-of-the-art technology and
convergence that would be rolled out
over several years.
UWMC
UW-IT
UWMC
Phone Service
Phone
Service
Desktop
Voice/Video
Voicemail
VaaS
Analog
Digital
SIP
Digital
Analog
SIP
PC
PC
Concurrent to the pilot, UW-IT
had already begun stabilizing its
infrastructure, starting with replacing
outdated software and hardware
primarily for critical users in call
centers and medical centers.
Next, the team installed the Avaya
Aura platform, including Avaya Aura
Communications Manager, Session
Manager, and System Manager. The
foundation of the core architecture,
Session Manager supports the SIP
architecture and makes it possible
to manage users and multimedia
communications across both Avaya
and third-party communications
systems. Avaya Aura System Manager
is a web-based management console
for provisioning, user administration,
dial plan management, routing
policies, security and fault/
performance monitoring, and
licensing.
With Session Manager, IT isolates
different communities of use. They
can separate groups managed by
UW-IT and those managed by other
groups. Though they share an
architecture, no information is
compromised.
“It’s extremely helpful to have a single
mechanism for managing everything
in the core,” Rivera said.
Now, UW is migrating end users
to VoIP. Early adopters across
departments with different needs
are currently testing applications.
“We’re jumping into VoIP technology
with both feet” Rivera said. “Our
customers will have a lot of options
for communicating beyond the
handset – handsets, applications on
smart phones or tablets, or clients on
their PCs or Macs.”
Video Conferencing
Mobile
Devices
Mobile
Devices
Session
Manager
Public
Switched
Network
System
Manager
Session Border
Controllers
Internet
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
University of Washington
Next, UW will deploy and integrate
unified communications applications
to give end users seamless use
across their many devices. When
fully complete, the new unified
communications infrastructure will
give end users rich telephony features
such as auto call recording and call
forwarding, and video options such
as virtual conference rooms.
From the pilot to each phase of the
rollout, the Avaya team has been right
there with UW-IT to consult on the
architecture and best practices for
the deployment.
Video Pilots
Video is a major piece of UW’s vision.
Students, faculty and staff can jump
into virtual video conference rooms to
get business done, rather than
traveling to campus.
Currently, UW-IT is running pilots for
three types of video communications:
• Online video – Users connect online
PC to PC, PC to smart phone or PC
to tablet.
• On-premises video – Tied to the
Avaya SIP core, customers can
seamlessly conduct video calls
between mobile devices and
conference room systems.
• Hosted video – UW-IT is piloting
virtual video conference room
solutions for access through any
device.
Lower Cost, Higher
Productivity
The converged network improves
efficiency and productivity
throughout the university:
• It reduces the total cost of
ownership because the network
infrastructure is shared, rather than
being duplicated. A common
network of routers, switches, and
cabling all connect voice and data
traffic.
• A shared infrastructure reduces IT
management and maintenance time
and costs.
• Unified communications and VoIP
enables soft clients, reducing the
need for physical handsets.
• The core is compatible with
departments’ existing infrastructure –
avoiding costly replacement – or
whatever departments choose to
deploy in the future.
avaya.com | 3
• Unified communications systems support high availability with a globally
deployable active/active infrastructure core; fully redundant servers; redundant
media and network paths; and regional, local and small office survivability.
“Avaya Aura was
superior in terms
of opens
standards,
integration
capabilities and
session control
compared to
other vendors.
The technology
pilot gave us the
• UW also anticipates major productivity gains. Employees can choose from an
array of options to communicate wherever they are, helping them get work done
faster.
UW-IT recently received confirmation of the initiative’s value. A leading
telecommunications and unified communications consultant performed a
comprehensive review of the project to validate the architecture implemented to
date, and review plans for the next phase of the upgrade.
“As a result of the comprehensive review of our efforts, the consultant has
confirmed and validated the Avaya SIP core architecture,” Rivera said. “ The
consultant’s report also recommended proceeding with the next phase of the
project to deliver VoIP and UC to the campus and community. This recommendation
is conditioned on the requirement that the Avaya Aura and other vendor solutions
are effectively packaged in the UW-IT Service Catalog and also are effectively
supported with communications programs, adoption support, and necessary UW
policy changes so as to meet the communications requirements identified by
campus customers.”
“Bottom line, the consultant has concurred and recommended a very deliberate
roll-out to ensure high adoption.”
confidence to
put Avaya Aura
into our core.”
Solutions
• Avaya Aura®
• Avaya Aura® Communication Manager
• Avaya Aura® Session Manager
• Avaya Aura® System Manager
ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
About Avaya
Avaya is a global
provider of business
collaboration and
communications
solutions, providing
unified communications,
contact centers,
networking and related
services to companies
of all sizes around
the world. For more
information please visit
www.avaya.com.
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| avaya.com
Founded in 1861 by a private gift of 10 acres in what is now the heart of downtown
Seattle, the University of Washington is one of the oldest public universities on the
US West Coast. As the state’s flagship university, the UW serves more students than
any other institution in the Northwest — more than 51,000 annually. In addition to
UW Seattle, the university has thriving campuses in Tacoma and Bothell and a
robust professional and continuing education program.
© 2013 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.
All trademarks identified by ®, ™, or SM are registered marks, trademarks, and service marks, respectively, of Avaya Inc.
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