• Convergence Strategy and Roadmap
• Technology Planning and Readiness
• Convergence Life Cycle Deployment Services
• Convergence Optimization

Convergence Strategy and Roadmap

This offering combines business and technical consulting to define an actionable plan to move toward an optimal convergent voice, video, and data services architecture and operating model. The planning process begins with the discovery of current and future organizational and business requirements, spanning voice, video, unified communications, and fixed mobile convergence (FMC) features. Then begins the definition of technical requirements, identifying viable solution alternatives, developing a strategic and holistic strategy from those alternatives, and creating an econometric model defining migration risks, cost of ownership, and expected return on investment. The transformation roadmap is comprised of a series of actionable steps over a multi-year period to transform the organization to the desired architecture.

Technology Planning and Readiness

Convergence planning and readiness helps ascertain how capable the current packet network is in absorbing the grooming of traffic from the legacy voice network. This offering may be included in the scope of a Convergence Strategy and Roadmap, as part of a Convergence Life Cycle Deployment, or standalone. The scope of review typically includes on-net capacity, off-net capacity, Quality of Service (QoS) for low-delay/low-jitter voice, HVAC and power needs, and availability and survivability during element and trunk degradations. Other elements under consideration may include the readiness of staffing, and maturity of operational platforms and processes to adequately support and deliver “day 2” convergent services.

Convergence Life Cycle Deployment Services

AT&T Consulting has extensive experience with large scale and complex IP Telephony (IPT) planning, design, engineering and implementation. A key value to our clients is the rollout of IP telephony systems that are completely integrated with legacy Private Branch Exchanges (PBX), Centrex deployments, and voicemail platforms. Activities may include project plan development, traffic analysis, detailed technical requirements, high level manufacturer systems design, engineering templates, specific site engineering, multisite installation generation, operations management planning and transitional support to “day 2” operations. Design and engineering components include complete system design, IP addressing and LAN segmentation, directory services schema integration, completion of dial plans and route patterns, and QoS design and engineering. The integration phase includes staging, pilot deployment, quality assurance, installation and back-out plans, production deployment, user cutovers and transitional operations support and escalation.

Convergence Optimization

Over time, voice networks have a tendency to become “out of sync” with the changing mix of traffic being carried. Convergence optimization looks at how to optimize dial planning and other features of existing TDM voice networks, as well as established IPT infrastructures. AT&T Consulting performs traffic engineering to determine the proper trunking requirements so that unneeded facilities can be removed without impacting the targeted grade of service. L east cost routing is also used to leverage the most appropriate network facilities, carrier contracts, and best cost-per-minute use of alternative transport for bearer channel routing. Dial or numbering plan optimization facilitates efficient end-to-end routing, as well as DID and extension assignment to users which avoids duplicate numbers and reduces the number of digits users must enter, resulting in a more optimal user experience.