Central Intelligence
There's been an ongoing grudge match between centralization and distribution, two important but opposing ways of designing computer and communications systems. A swinging of paradigms in enterprise voice communications will soon return dial plan intelligence back under central control.
Who doesn't have the urge to centralize? It's just a natural way to manage everything from hub-and-spoke communication networks, computers (client-server architectures), to even transportation routes.
Centralized systems simply involve less overhead. It is much easier to update, say, a single software configuration file for a central web application than to change each copy of an application across multiple desktop computers. And I won’t even trouble you with all the consistency issues that can crop up.
With zillions of computers requiring regular maintenance, it’s not a surprise that centralized cloud computing now resonates with companies looking to save on IT costs.
In the voice world, a similar shift is about to take place with dial plans.
In many multi-location organizations, on-premise PBXs handle four or five-digit dialing sequences—with each box having its own dialing rules! Adding new extensions to a business phone network involves the same headaches as the aforementioned config file update challenge.
The cure to call routing confusion is, of course, a unified dial plan. But these have not been easy to implement.
There is a way out. Taking a cue from the service provider’s IMS network, business network designers finally have a proven approach to a centralized routing strategy. The solution: clever adaptation modules at the core will normalize numbers to enable a true enterprise-wide dialing structure.
Looking for a product that adopts a centralized IMS model to dial plans? Get to know Avaya Aura.
Posted by Andy Green at 10:14 on July 01, 2009