View Larger Image	John Q. Walker, Jeffrey T. Hicks Cisco Press, Paperback, Published February 2004, 294 pages, ISBN 1587200929
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Read an excerpt: Chapter 2: Building a Business Case for VoIP       Copyright © Cisco Systems, Inc. Published by Cisco Press. Written permission from the publisher is required for any use of this material.

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• Cisco Press

Strategies and solutions for successful VoIP deployments

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.

Table of Contents

(NOTE: Chapters 1-7 end with Chapter Summary and End Notes.)

Why We Wrote This Book.


1. VoIP Basics.

Network Security Is Tough! Three Stages in Managing Security. Problem Areas for VoIP Security. VoIP Security Recommendations. Chapter Summary. Conclusion. End Notes.

About the Authors

John Q. Walker, Ph.D., was a founder of Ganymede Software, heading the software development team there before it joined NetIQ Corporation in spring 2000. Currently, he is the president of Zenph Studios, Inc., makers of multimedia software. In earlier positions, he managed teams responsible for designing and developing high-speed networking at IBM. Dr. Walker holds a Ph.D. in software engineering; his master's degree focused on system testing.

Dr. John R. Walker is professor and director of the Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management Program at the Alliant International University in San Diego, California. John's fifteen years of industry experience includes management training at the Savoy Hotel London. This was followed by terms as food and beverage manager, assistant rooms division manager, catering manager, and general manager with Grand Metropolitan Hotels, Selsdon Park Hotel, Rank Hotels, Inter-Continental Hotels, and the Coral Reef Resort, Barbados, West Indies.

For the past twenty years he has taught at two- and four-year schools in Canada and the United States. In addition to being a hospitality management consultant and text author, he has been published in The Cornell Hotel Restaurant Administration Quarterly and The Hospitality Educators Journal.

John is an editorial advisory board member for Progress in Tourism and Hospitality Research, published by John Wiley & Sons. John is a past president of the Pacific Chapter of the Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education (CHRIE). He is a certified hotel administrator and a certified Foodservice Management Professional (FMP).

Jeffrey T. Hicks is a Principal Software Engineer/Architect at NetIQ Corporation. He has recently led the development teams for the award-winning Chariot and Vivinet Assessor products. He has been active in the design and development of VoIP deployment, testing, and management solutions for the past 5 years. In earlier jobs, Jeffrey helped develop innovative network communications software products at IBM. Mr. Hicks holds a master of engineering degree from North Carolina State University and a bachelor of science degree in computer engineering from Auburn University. His e-mail address is jeff.hicks@netiq.com.

Jan 27, 2005     Sam Chang
VoIP From a Business Perspective
John Walker and Jeffrey Hickss Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project (ISBN: 1587200929, Cisco Press) is an installment in Ciscos Network Business Series line of books and covers the topic of voice over IP (VoIP) from a business strategy perspective. Although the book does cover some technical aspects of VoIP, its main purpose is to guide the reader in understanding the steps from beginning to end on how to develop a business case all the way to deploying a successful and secure VoIP deployment. The book covers eight major areas that can really be summed up into three major headings: VoIP Technology Summary, Business Justification, and Deployment Considerations.

The VoIP Basics or technology summary provides the necessary background information on the PSTN and legacy PBXs in order to present the context for understanding how VoIP is a change in voice technology. This section is brief, and Walker and Hicks end with a general overview of data technology and how you converge old voice technology into it, discussing signaling, transport protocols, codecs, and the hardware necessary to make everything work. In terms of the business case for VoIP, the authors present three major cost savings opportunities: toll cost savings, simple network savings, and productivity savings. These areas are commonly talked about and should not be a surprise to the reader; the value here is that the book enables the reader to talk intelligently about the cost savings areas to a business audience. From here, Walker and Hicks cover how to project the ROI, how to make sure you have the data to back up your projections, and what associated costs should be considered before starting the project. Lastly, the authors spend time discussing both the pre and post implementation requirements and implications of running VoIP, spending less time on the technical details and more time on the big picture of implementing such a technology: Considering the quality requirements (i.e., QoS), integrating VoIP into a network management structure, establishing SLAs with the customer, and securing the technology.

Overall, the book provides a good, but broad treatment of how to present a case for VoIP and then deploy it. The irony of the book is that the readers who can best utilize the information will probably be the ones that find the book a little boring. For example, experienced managers will take away the unique points of implementing VoIP and recognize how it can fit in a realistic way for their particular environment. Because of their pre-existing experience and knowledge, however, they may find the book too basic, although the lessons learned will most likely be valuable to them. To the less experienced readers, the book is a great starting point and will most likely engage them more, but without additional references or resources (e.g., basic project management skills, understanding business budgeting cycles, etc.), the information learned may be just enough to make them dangerous.

Apr 8, 2004     Mark G. Reyero, CCIE #12932 (mark_reyero@hotmail.com) from Annapolis, MD
A Must Read for any IT Decision Maker
As one of the lead Network / IP Telephony engineers for my employer, GE IT Solutions, I was excited to learn that Cisco Press had published a book addressing the business and project management aspects of Voice Over IP (VOIP). I was glad that I picked up Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project by John Walker and Jeffrey Hicks (ISBN 1587200929) and I highly recommend the book to any IT decision maker, project manager, or lead engineer considering VoIP technologies.

The authors clearly indicate in their preface that the book is not a technical how-to manual for VoIP. Rather, the target audience is chief information officers and information technology managers who choose to deploy VoIP in their organizations. The book opens with an overview of VoIP terminology and acronyms. For the most part, the discussion remains at a high level, although the details on IP packet headers probably couldve been scaled back, given the target audience. Chapter 2 delves into the business drivers for moving to VoIP, such as convergence and ROI.

Chapter 3, Planning for VoIP, was a particularly helpful section in relation to my job functions. The chapter does an excellent job discussing the value and importance of planning and design for VoIP networks, a critical piece of any VoIP project that I feel customers (and even some vendors and implementers) often overlook. In fact, if it werent a copyright violation, Id probably copy the entire chapter and hand it out to any of my existing and potential VoIP customers. Better still, Ill by them a copy of this book.

Subsequent chapters of the books focus continue to balance the business considerations with the technical aspects of VoIP. Topics of discussion include finding the right implementer, QoS tuning, ongoing VoIP Management, SLAs, and security considerations.

As mentioned earlier, I highly recommend the book to any IT decision maker, project manager, or lead engineer. Ive encouraged many of my non-technical business colleagues at GE ITS to read Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project. In fact, one of our Six Sigma quality leaders engrossed herself in the book and gained an very comprehensive understanding of both the business and technical aspects of VoIP. Next thing I know, she'll be pursuing her CCIE!

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