Posted by Johanna Holopainen
Sr. Manager, ISV Alliances
Marketing
Two years have passed since VMware and Mitel debuted their joint solution for virtualizing voice applications, and yet I run into customers who still insist that voice applications need their own physical servers.? As businesses of all sizes continue to adopt unified communications (UC), it?s important that IT professionals understand the full range of options for hosting?and virtualizing?UC components, including voice.
Let?s start with a super-quick overview. UC isn?t a technology, but an umbrella term for a collection of technologies such as email, texting, instant messaging, conferencing, call control, and of course, voice. ?Integrating these technologies delivers a host of benefits. Employees can stay better connected with their customers?and each other?through integrated messaging, mobility support, and presence, that very cool feature that makes sure your messages find you, no matter where you are. Managers use conferencing and collaboration to keep projects on track and do more with less.? On the IT side, centralized administration and reporting makes network provisioning and control a lot easier.? In short, UC has something for everyone in the organization.
So what?s the issue in virtualizing UC? Primarily, it?s about performance, that is, the effect of latency on the user experience. Some UC components have real-time requirements, for example, IP voice quality degrades dramatically if just a handful of packets arrive too late. Email, text messages and other UC features aren?t as latency-sensitive as voice?they?re often called ?near-real-time.?? (My colleague Robert Campbell will be blogging about performance requirements for UC in an upcoming blog.)
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A big advantage for us in moving down the voice virtualization route was the ease of business continuity and disaster recovery...before, we had about a 72-hour lead time to recover our voice solutions, now we can do it within hours.
Rob Neil, Head of ICT and customer services
Ashford Borough Council
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Until a few years ago, there were good reasons to virtualize only the near-real-time components and keep the real-time apps running on physical servers, but thanks to advances such as the VMware-Mitel solutions, that has changed.? Today, just about any real-time application can be virtualized. When it comes to voice, VMware and Mitel have joint customers?enterprises and SMBs?who have successfully deployed virtualized voice applications. They report benefits such as reduced data center footprint, energy savings, ?centralized management, and especially business continuity/disaster recovery?a capability that is relatively new for voice applications (click on the image below to hear them).
In short, virtualizing voice and other real-time applications is not only practical, it makes good technical and business sense. VMware and Mitel have proved it?now it?s time for you to seriously consider it in your environment.
Learn more about voice virtualization by downloading the VMware-Mitel white paper ?Uniting the Worlds of Data and Voice: Adding Unified Communications to the Virtual Data Center.? And please let us know where you stand on this issue. Are you sold on the benefits of virtualizing voice and other real-time applications, or do you still have reservations?
Source: http://blogs.vmware.com/alliances/2012/03/vmware_mitel_uc.html
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