Relocation Specialists for Technology and Business Communication

Our goal is to assist clients with the highly technical aspect of office relocations, upgrades or expansions and provide a simple solution that will ensure a smooth transition with no interruption in normal day-to-day voice and data business communications.

Advance planning and coordination are key elements to a successful relocation or upgrade, and we work closely with our clients to prepare a critical time-line covering each item that will affect the outcome of the move. The planning of the technology move should begin at least 90 days before the move date, especially the notification with the phone and Internet carrier, as often their systems take 5 to 6 weeks to accommodate new/moved circuits. Being agents for TelePacific, AT&T, Paetec, Cbeyond and every other major phone and data service provider, as well as, being veterans in the relocation of mission critical technologies, we make sure your move across the street or across the nation is smooth for you… and seamless to your customers.

The following lists some of the considerations for a relocation:

1. The proper type and quantity of telephone lines / circuits needed for the new location, as well as Internet, i.e. regular telephone C.O. lines, Digital PRI, T-1, DID, DSL, and high-speed connectivity for data transmission and Internet access. Backup resources as needed.

2. Test and evaluate existing voice and data cabling in the new location to determine if it will meet the needs of your telephone and data processing equipment.

3. Size, ventilation and electrical must be evaluated for the Server/Telecommunication Room (MDF Main Distribution Frame) layout. Connectivity from the MPOE Minimum Point Of Entry (sometimes referred to as the DEMARC, or point of Demarcation) to the MDF must be evaluated, as well as any IDF Intermediate Distribution Frame locations or needs.

4. Consideration to relocate, and upgrade if necessary, the existing telephone and voice processing equipment and install them at the new location.

5. Consideration to relocate, and upgrade if necessary, the existing data, network and server equipment and install them at the new location.

6. Planning for relocation of Local and Wide Area Networks.

7. Evaluate to what extent the new location may need video surveillance cameras and recording.

As the age old saying goes, “People don’t plan to fail they often just fail to plan”. Never underestimate the value of a good relocation plan.
David Case – smplsolutions – 800-943-7675

Comments(0)June 12, 2011 VoIP with Strata Net QSIG and Toshiba IPedge

Let’s say that you have an impressive sales office downtown, your administration and warehouse are in an industrial park in the suburbs and you have retail outlets in the better malls in the area. Wouldn’t it be nice for all of them to be served by a single telephone system with one voice mail and one receptionist? And maybe one Toll Free Number? The arrival of high-speed internet access and the maturity of Voice over IP (VoIP) have finally made this possible at a fraction of the cost of only a few years ago.

Toshiba has been leading the way in the Small-to-Medium Business (SMB) segment. The Strata CIX and soon to be released Toshiba IPedge offer robust private voice networking, Strata Net, as part of the Toshiba family of telecommunications products. Based on QSIG, an international standard, Strata Net allows multiple Toshiba systems to share voice mail systems and attendants, have common features and a coordinated numbering plan, have customized employee directories, and route calls simply and easily throughout the business. Toshiba has had the foresight to port its mature, QSIG-based networking to VoIP with the same feature set and interactions. This allows you to create a single, seamless network even if you need to mix internet and ISDN technologies. For each location, you can choose the best technology for bandwidth, voice quality and security without having to abandon any of your investment.

Using the internet to transport voice between locations is sometimes seen as “free”: close but not quite. The internet allows you to eliminate costly dedicated circuits between locations: leased by the month and by the mile. Instead, you provide each location with high-speed internet access and the telephone system provides the intelligence for one system to find and communicate with the other systems across the internet. Unlike dedicated circuits whose bandwidth is unavailable even if no conversations are in progress, VoIP only consumes bandwidth as needed.

The internet is inherently unmanaged, meaning that the end user can exercise no control over prioritization, routing or bandwidth control. With a large number of calls, voice quality can deteriorate. This is less important for conversations between employees than it is between your customers and your employees. In recent years, managed wide-area technologies like MPLS (MultiProtocol Label Switching) have emerged to allow you to control quality factors and still not require dedicated circuits. They cost slightly more than high-speed internet but still less than dedicated circuits. Older offerings like Frame Relay operate on virtual dedicated circuits that impose arbitrary restrictions on the various locations’ ability to communicate with each other. For occasional calls between employees and for voicemail retrievals, the internet is usually quite adequate.

Toshiba has taken all this a step further and uses the same hardware that supports Strata Net to support VoIP telephones. This allows you to use any excess hardware capacity to support at-home workers or road warriors with the same high quality phone service they would expect in the office.

The good news is that the technology is here and we at smplsolutions know that it works.
David Case – smplsolutions – 800-943-7675

Comments(0)May 15, 2011