NETW208 Course Project

This team project will center on a realistic networking design for a rich IP telephony applications and service environment for a medium size enterprise. Each team will research alternative customer-premised versus hosted VoIP PBX solutions of reputable vendors including Avaya, Cisco, eSpace, Genesis, Mitel, MiVoice, NEC, Omni, Ring Central, and other reputable vendors.

We shall assume that the solution will be matched to a medium size business with 500 employees with an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) or contact center capability supporting 50 agents. Additionally, this business will need SIP trunks with adequate bandwidth to support a busy-hour network traffic load of 50 Erlangs with a blocking probability of 2%.

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) would like an 8- to 10-page document (double-spaced, font size 12) that addresses the following:

· Compare and contrast the salient characteristics of a hosted versus customer-premised solution and select a specific hosted or customer-premises approach from one of the leading IP-PBX vendors.

· Justify your recommendation for a hosted or a customer-premised solution by developing an analysis that supports such a selection based on an overall evaluation of the product and the benefits it will bring to the company.

· Propose a specific vendor's product to implement the IP-PBX system

Guidelines

Criteria

The Course Project is worth 275 points and is comprised of the following deliverables.

Deliverable	Points	Week
Develop a Critical and Balanced Analysis of a Hosted Solution Vs Customer-Premised Solution	75	4
Develop a documentation package (This is the Project Paper) that is inclusive of an analysis and a final proposal for a specific solution. The solution should include the selection of a current IP-PBX product vendor.	125	6
PPT Presentation summarizing the outputs from the Week 4 and Week 6 deliverables	75	7
Total	275

Check List for a Choice of Architecture (Hosted or Customer-Premised Solution)

The following check-list should be used to support your choice of a hosted or customer-premised solution. Please use the following table to evaluate each alternative approach.

Topic	Subtopic	Percentage of Topic	Percentage of Total Paper
I. Experience and Connectivity			30%
	Experience of the Company	10%
	ACD based on Windows	10%
	Call Center (includes 50 agents)	10%
II. Multimedia Support			35%
	E-mail	5%
	Chat	5%
	Voice Mail	5%
	IVR	5%
	Outbound Calling	5%
	CTI Integration	5%
	CRM (Contact Center) Support	5%
III. Initial and Recurring Costs			35%
	Initial Capital Investment	10%
	IT Staff Expenses ($/Year)	10%
	Recurring Monthly Costs	10%
	Modularity and Extensibility of Features and System Capabilities	5%
Total Percentage of Topics Covered		100%	100%

General Considerations

Some more considerations for a good paper include the following.

· The project paper is intended to be a professional document and shall only address the company's business requirements and concerns.

· The document should assign a numeric value or score to each checklist item for each vendor's solution.

· The document should have statements justifying the score given to each feature in the cross-vendor evaluation.

· The primary grading emphasis will be on the similarities and differences among vendors in terms of each checklist item.

· The plagiarism policy is in effect. References to specific product information must be cited throughout the document.

· APA formatting is required for the document.

· The document shall be comprised of individual and original contributions from each member of the team. 

· Questions concerning the preparation of this document may be discussed in weekly Q & A discussion forums and during the weekly office hour sessions.

Specific Course Project Deliverables

Week 4

The key objective of this deliverable is to identify two viable and competitive cloud-based and two customer-premised IP-PBX offerings that could potentially meet the needs of the company and document the application/service attributes of each potential vendors offering using the vendor check list. (75points)

Week 6

Solution Directions and Vendor Selection: Propose a specific solution direction that is either cloud-based or a customer-premised solution. Justify your proposal based on the overall application, services, and initial capital and recurring costs to the business. (125 Points)

Week 7

Develop a PPT presentation that summarizes the body of work completed in Weeks 4 and 6. (75 Points)