Key questions answered about IT’s top 3 converging forces

In our webinar last week, “The Perfect IT Storm: Collaboration, Virtualization & Mobility,” a group chat brought out many great questions which our experts were standing by to answer. Here’s the transcript. If you have more questions, add them in the comments section here and we’ll have an expert answer them for you.

QUESTION 1
So how can SIP Trunking extend the range of my presence and IM capabilities? And can I extend it to my partners or clients outside of my organization?
ANSWER 1
That’s a good question… SIP Trunking can allow you to use your IM client to make calls to the PSTN – way beyond your organization. Also, it interacts with your UC solution to update your presence – showing you on a PSTN call. It can even allow you to conference PSTN calls and IP calls together.

QUESTION 2
SIP is IP based phone calls through the internet right? How solid is that?
ANSWER 2
You are right – SIP can use the internet as well as private IP networks. It’s very solid – and used by more and more businesses all the time – even large banks, enterprises, and governments. Just make sure you get a good quality service.

QUESTION 3
Haven’t heard anything about SLAs, performance management of IaaS? So that clients can ensure the vendor network is performing as sold?
ANSWER 3
We can specify what the performance parameters are that ensure good voice quality over the internet. People can then use these in discussions with their service provider – making sure that provider can meet those standards.

QUESTION 4
I tested Lync a couple years back and that was the challenge QOS on my intranet was easy enough to control. How do we handle QOS outside of our networks?
ANSWER 4
That’s a great question. When considering a Cloud IaaS service provider the SLA that supports the service is a critical factor. The SLA needs to take 3 components of the solution into consideration: 1) The availability and performance of the physical cloud hardware 2) The availability and performance of the virtual machines and finally 3) Consider how you’re *connecting* to the cloud – what is the SLA for that element? For the record, Allstream’s Cloud Compute IaaS service has an SLA of 99.95% availability at the Virtual Machine and hardware level.

QUESTION 5
How does mobile UC support mobile device integration with fixed communications gear and networks?
ANSWER 5
Great question…we deploy a Mobile UC controller (physical or virtual server) in the customer’s environment that acts as middleware between the company’s phone system (PBX), MDM platform and mobile devices. We work with the IT team to push out client software to a range of mobile devices (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry) that enables PBX features to be securely extended to mobile users. We also assess the capability of the customer’s 802.11 wireless WLAN to support VoWiFi – if required we upgrade the infrastructure. All of these elements are fully managed, including proactive availability and QoS monitoring, notifications and incident response.

QUESTION 6
Are there tools available to reconfigure the QOS on the ISP for the client line or is it done via support ticket? Also what is the turn-around time?
ANSWER 6
It will generally be a support ticket kind of activity. Either that or you confirm the performance before activating the service.

Watch the entire Webinar, “The Perfect IT Storm: Collaboration, Virtualization & Mobility,” on demand, anytime, anywhere.