UC tools can significantly improve group and company cooperation and performance, as well as decrease communication costs. Because these applications are network-driven and rely on consistent, robust network performance, even the slightest degradation can impair or stop critical business communication.
UC's sensitivity to network problems, especially delay and jitter, make monitoring the network infrastructure essential. Understanding how to effectively measure performance to manage these problems lets organizations realize the promise of unified communications. There are several steps every organization should take when planning, deploying, and managing UC applications.
Establish Benchmarks Through Predeployment Testing
Typically when implementing new communications applications, many network managers take one of two approaches: they may install new technologies and address performance problems as they arise, or arbitrarily increase network capacity as they add applications.
Conducting a site survey before installing UC services can identify and eliminate many performance problems. Proper predeployment testing also allows IT staff to understand bandwidth demand and application performance and establish acceptable benchmarks. This knowledge is critical in determining how the network will handle the new UC traffic and in identifying any changes needed to effectively support communications.
Observer can be used to track, store, and analyze long-term activity to define what is considered normal for a particular environment. Insights on network and application performance gained from the initial site survey and continual monitoring of the added UC traffic also helps in intelligently configuring alarms to alert staff when performance deviates from the norm.
Bandwidth Demands
UC applications differ from traditional applications. For instance, if a user checks their e-mail, only a small amount of data is sent over the network and the connection remains idle while the e-mail is being read. Most UC tools, like web conferencing, are the opposite–network bandwidth demand is high and constant. The network engineer must be sure that unexpected spikes from other applications don't impact the user experience. Unlike with e-mail, any performance delay will be immediately noticeable to the user.
QoS is a Necessity
When implementing any communications application, ensuring bandwidth availability through Quality of Service (QoS) is imperative. Failing to implement QoS opens up the possibility of interference from other applications on the network, a problem known as contention. Contention leads to common performance problems including jitter and packet loss. Contrary to the practices of some organizations, throwing bandwidth at contention problems doesn’t solve the issue. Even a network with large bandwidth capacity can have poor call quality due to network contention. Use QoS tools to give applications like VoIP the highest precedence available, which will guarantee they have enough bandwidth to function smoothly.
While UC applications can improve company cooperation and performance, an ill-prepared deployment can be disastrous for the network and the business. Taking time to effectively plan, assess, and regularly monitor performance allows organizations to detect and avoid potential obstacles to success and realize the benefits of unified communications.
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