Strategies and solutions for successful VoIP deployments

Network Business Series
Justify your network investment

• The step-by-step approach to VoIP deployment and management enables you to plan early and properly for successful VoIP integration with your existing systems, networks, and applications.

• The detailed introduction offers a common grounding for members of both the telephony and data networking communities.

• IT managers and project leaders are armed with details on building a business case for VoIP, including details of return-on-investment (ROI) analysis and justification.
• A VoIP deployment is presented as a major IT project, enabling you to understand the steps involved and the required resources.
• The comprehensive look at quality of service and tuning describes when and where to use them in a VoIP deployment. These are often the most complex topics in VoIP; you'll get smart recommendations on which techniques to use in various circumstances.
• You learn how to plan for VoIP security, including prevention, detection, and reaction.

Voice over IP (VoIP) is the telephone system of the future. Problem is, VoIP is not yet widely deployed, so there are few skilled practitioners today. As you make your move to VoIP, how will you know how to make VoIP work and keep it working well? What changes will you need to make without disrupting your business? How can you show your return on this investment?

Many books contain technical details about VoIP, but few explain in plain language how to make it run successfully in an enterprise. Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project provides the detailed plans you need to be successful in your organization's deployment of VoIP. Through their years of work in the field, authors John Q. Walker and Jeffrey T. Hicks bring a project-oriented approach to VoIP, with much-needed clarity on getting VoIP to work well.

Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project starts with simple concepts, each chapter building on the knowledge from the last. Although not a technical manual, you learn about the standards, such as H.323, G.711, and Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP), and the implications they have on your VoIP system. Most importantly, you'll gain expert advice and a systematic guide on how to make VoIP work for your organization.

This volume is in the Network Business Series offered by Cisco Press. Books in this series provide IT executives, decision makers, and networking professionals with pertinent information on today's most important technologies and business strategies.

John Walker and Jeffery Hicks more than provide entry-level information regarding several very important aspects of VoIP Implementation. It is easy to see that both have a great deal of knowledge not only regarding VoIP but communications in general.
It was very refreshing to see that two data guys would know so much about voice and the PSTN. I found that the majority of recommended/more information references that are listed at the end of the chapters are either on my desk or on my wish list. This is an excellent bridge for both data and voice technicians.

This book is divided into eight extremely easy to follow well-organized chapters that are written in plain language. While I have read a lot of other technical manuals out of necessity I admit this one I read out of a desire to learn more. This book did not feel like a technical manual. While technical aspects are very well covered this book is less dry than most I have read.

Chapter One Voice basics is a great introduction to either the Data or Telephony networking communities. Regardless of which community you come from you will be engaged. This was a great easy way to start this book. The concepts are built upon from here.

Chapter Two Building a Business Case for VoIP does a fantastic job of outlining the advantages and disadvantages to deploying VoIP. This chapter also covers ROI and other business obstacles that may effect your deployment. I have never personally had to fiure an ROI so I was not informed as to everything involved with processing the information and this book defiantly helped me in that aspect.

Chapter Three Planning for VoIP excellent outline of what needs to be considered before implementation is almost a checklist of what you need to consider and what research needs to be done to your network before you begin.

Chapter Four Do It Yourself, or Outsource is a little more business oriented than other chapters but if you are the decision maker this is an excellent source of questions you need to ask yourself or the provider you chose.

Chapter Five Quality of Service and Tuning is a great introduction to several key concepts. Several important protocols and queueing techniques are covered with enough detail to get you more involved in performance tuning of your network. This book does an excellent job of introducing MPLS and RSVP. This is a great primer and will lead to a desire to read additional books on these concepts as well as the RFCs listed.

Chapter Six Ongoing VoIP Management highlights several tasks that you might want to ensure that your staff can perform/be trained to perform during and after the deployment project. This chapter has several key performance measuring concepts that must be considered. This is one of the more technical chapters but maintains a decent level readability.

Chapter Seven Establishing VoIP SLAs is a step-by-step approach to establishing service levels. The metrics involved in service levels are covered in detail after reading this you will be able to negotiate with your provider or will be able to defend your networks reliability as we all know it is always the network is to slow.

Chapter Eight VoIP Security is veritable list of security concerns as well as concepts for tightening a VoIP network. These techniques are not completely new and can to a certain extent be applied to your data network. Even if you are not currently considering VoIP this is a must read.

All in all this is an excellent book. This is a fantastically written primer to VoIP deployment as well as just an excellent learning tool. I would recommend this book to anyone working in either Telephony or Data networking as converged networks are

The book is broken up into eight chapters, with topics ranging from VoIP Basics, Planning for VoIP, QoS, and Security. Each chapter averages between 20 and 40 pages. The authors use a style, which will for the most part, not scare away the non-technical among us. Two chapters are slightly more technical than the rest, but this is probably out of necessity. The book is around 270 pages, which I was able to read through in about four hours with a moderate amount of distraction from the TV and kids.

As the back cover states, the book is written in plain language and each chapter builds upon the next. You learn about the standards and protocols involved with VoIP, how they interact, and also the hardware and software needed for a successful project. The authors do a great job explaining the budgeting and planning process. I particularly appreciate that this book does a good job presenting the facts and not just serving as a marketing mouth piece for Cisco.

In the future, I plan on providing a copy of this book to other members of my team who frequently are involved with the sales process so that they have a good working knowledge of the technology. Furthermore the book will serve as an excellent reference for our pre-sales and project management folks in helping communicating the project progression and planning steps needed. Lastly, I plan on getting a few copies into the hands of key people at sites that are even remotely considering a VoIP project. I feel that this book alone, in the right hands, could close the gap of understanding and provide at least a couple of sales.

I wholeheartedly recommend this to sales people, project managers, CEOs, CIOs and anyone else that doesn't have the time or necessarily the desire to wade through the technical manuals that is needed to talk intelligently or understand VoIP. I think the time spent reading this book will be well worth it for anyone who works their way through it.

However the book lacks a decent index section. Hardly any important words are mentioned.