Technical solutions are valuable only when they contribute to reducing expenses or if they contribute to increasing revenue. The cost of implementing such technology must be lower than the expected gain from the solution. Therefore, the SOW must demonstrate the potential gain from implementing a rollout of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 at Litware, Inc.
Terms such as return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership become important in this discussion. The simple fact is that if a business cannot justify the cost of a new installation or an upgrade to an existing solution, there is little to no incentive to spend capital monies to implement the solution.
Return on investment defines what the capital expenditure will be to implement the planned solution and how long it will take to realize the return of the expenditure.
Total cost of ownership defines what—on a recurring basis—the actual year-to-year cost of the solution will be. Few solutions are implemented that have only a one-time cost associated with them. Such things as the monthly cost of additional phone and data lines, Internet access fees, electricity, maintenance of hardware, and licensing costs of software—as well as the people to manage all of it—are recurring costs that affect the total cost of ownership.
The SOW should make budgetary assumptions and define business requirements as determined from upper management proposals. Using these in the initial phases of your planning is vital.
There are a number of ways that you can reconfirm the actual business requirements by talking with the stakeholders. An interview format is the most typical method because the information gathered should be heavily documented to support your ultimate cost and potential for return on investment. Being the business owners, the stakeholders are likely to be directors, general managers, or vice presidents of the departments or divisions that will actually use the technology you are planning. Their input is the most important information you will gather. These are the actual business requirements that will drive your planning process.
Litware, Inc. is a publishing firm. Its products are published materials of all types, from brochures to manuals for technical companies. They employ 145,000 people in three locations:
Chicago, Illinois (100,000)
Paris, France (40,000)
Singapore (5,000)
Upper management has decided that they need to enhance the company’s ability to work and collaborate in a more real-time manner. The key reasons for deploying Office Communications Server as defined by the stakeholders are the following:
Reduce overall long-distance telephone costs, especially international, by providing alternative means for communicating with business partners and other Litware locations
Reduce human latency, that is, the time it takes to collaborate to develop a product
Optimize communication workflow with suppliers and provide alternate means of communicating with suppliers to reduce overall time to market
Provide a means for upper management to hold conferences with employees in Litware’s remote sites
Reduce the overall travel costs of the sales force by providing a means for them to connect and work with customers remotely in an effective and easy way
Given the preceding example, it’s important to recall that this customer was designing for Office Communications Server 2007, and the numbers for users and supported connections have changed for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Always refer to the documentation for what you are deploying because the recommendations and supported configurations can change from version to version as well as from service pack to service pack.
A list of requirements is interesting and valuable input to the planning process. It becomes much more valuable when the team is able to analyze each requirement and assign a meaningful priority to each. This priority system is driven by two factors:
Business urgency and need
Technical ability to implement in a timely way
Weighing both of these factors with input from your stakeholders and technical team, Litware will be able to determine which of the requirements are attainable in the first phase and which need to be planned for subsequent phases of the project. This prioritizing enables the team to set reasonable expectations for what will be delivered, when it will be delivered, and what will have to be postponed or eliminated due to time constraints, budgetary limits, or technical gaps.
In Table 14-2, each requirement is explained with mitigating factors and is assigned a priority from P0 to P2. P0 indicates that this is a must-have requirement for the initial release. P1 is a should-have requirement. P2 is a nice-to-have feature that can be dropped if time and funding were to impact its availability.
Table 14-2. Requirements and Priority Assignment with Justification
PRIORITY | REQUIREMENT | JUSTIFICATION NOTES |
|---|---|---|
P0 | Retire legacy Private Branch eXchanges (PBXs) in all locations | Requires much more planning than the current time line allows for; will roll out pilot in Chicago. |
P0 | Allow for availability and status of employees visible to others at a glance in often-used applications | Standard feature of integration with servers, client software, and user configuration. |
P0 | Make use of presence ability to manage communication type with users | Standard feature of server, client, and configuration and features of integration with Exchange/Microsoft Office Outlook. |
P1 | Presence enable in-house developed line of business applications | Developers must plan for either the dot version upgrade or for the next version. Expectation is 3–12 months for all line of business applications. |
P0 | Enable use of collaboration tools (whiteboard, desktop sharing, instant messaging [IM]) | Feature enabled with conferencing and client software. |
P0 | Team meetings for small (2–50) to medium (50–100) attendees | As long as scale requirements are considered, this will be a native part of the conferencing features. |
P1 | Rich media for presentations and desktop sharing for meetings | Audio/video (A/V) conferencing can be installed and is available by default; requires more bandwidth and needs to be studied in test for realistic limits and expectations. |
P2 | Larger meetings should be an option; no actual number has been set for this requirement, but it would be used for company meetings and shareholder meetings | The solution has a theoretical upper limit of 250 attendees; the online service scales much higher, and this is the expected optional route. |
P0 | Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) inter-site and intra-site | Using voice-enabled devices, interoffice communication is attainable; as defined earlier, voice calls outside will pilot in Chicago due to complexity and costs associated. |
P1 | Advanced voice mail system allowing for access from many places and many devices | Attainable goal, assuming that the integration with Exchange is done and the Exchange Servers can be scaled to handle additional loads. |
P0 | Remote access for employees at home and on the road | Using external access controls (Edge Servers), enabled employees will able to access the system remotely. |
P2 | Cell phone access and enhancements | Full feature and functionality is potentially dependent on the PBX retirement. Access, such as IM, is available with proper software on phone. |
P0 | Administrative assistants able to answer calls for assigned staff and management | Addition of the Attendant Console will allow for this feature. |
P1 | Administrative assistants able to take messages and forward directly to voice mail | Addition of the Attendant Console from above would allow for this; dependent on the Exchange concerns mentioned. |
P0 | Employees able to manage own phone forwarding and location options | Options for forwarding out of the environment are limited to the Chicago pilot group; other features will be available inside the infrastructure. |
P2 | Ability to staff a call center by using in-house technology rather than outsourcing to a third party | The Response Server feature that is available can act as an automatic call distribution system; full function is dependent on PBX goals; would be tested and piloted in Chicago. |
P0 | IM, desktop sharing, and presentations with federated partners | This ability is attainable with perimeter Access Edge Servers and agreements/configuration with partners who use Microsoft Office Communications Server or Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1). |
P1 | IM with customers not using Office Communications Server | Goal is attainable using the public IM connectivity feature with Access Edge Servers; the customer would have to use Yahoo!, AOL, or MSN instant messenger software; additional licensing and costs apply to this requirement. |
P0 | A/V conferences, presentations with partners and customers | This is an attainable goal, with the caveat that A/V is a much higher consumer of bandwidth and will need to be studied; presentations using Web conferencing are available with Edge Servers in perimeter. |
P0 | Ability to better communicate with suppliers to more easily collaborate and ease workflow bottlenecks | Federation goals cited previously meet most of the pre-existing conditions necessary to enable and use this feature; the supplier would need Office Communications Server to make best use of this requirement. |