Linda L. Chu, IST–CNS
Since 1996, the campus has funded approximately $15 million in improvements to the campus's communications infrastructure. An additional $25 million has been approved in concept, testifying to the importance of electronic campus communications to the University's academic mission and administrative functions. CNS staff and management are aware of the significant amount of money and effort these infrastructure projects cost the campus, and so we regularly reevaluate them. Another of CNS's responsibilities is to ensure that the decisions the campus makes today regarding the communications infrastructure will meet its future needs. CNS does the groundwork to fulfill these obligations through Project VOCAL (which began as "Voice Options for CAL" but now has a broader focus), and in January 2001, began creating a long-range strategic plan for electronic campus communications (voice, video, and data) through the year 2012.
We identified two major goals for our strategic planning process (described in detail in Update on Project VOCAL in the Fall 2001 BC&C). First, we wanted to establish a focus for campus telecommunications efforts in a resource-constrained environment. Second, we needed to reevaluate the assumptions behind capital purchases of electronics and infrastructure projects such as the Riser Project, the Inter-building Campus Communications System (ICCS), and CENIC's Optical Network Infrastructure (ONI) Initiative.
In the investigation phase, we evaluated Centrex, Private Branch Exchange (PBX), and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) options and their associated annual and lifecycle operating costs. Many of our findings and conclusions were much as we expected. For example:
We also found that:
When we compared our results to comparable studies conducted by other universities and reviewed available industry data, we found that they had made similar findings with respect to LCOC and the costs of major platform changes. No other organization of which we are aware performed their studies in as much detail as we did, so our results have been especially interesting to others in the industry.
As a result of our study, CNS is planning to focus our long-range communication efforts on the following:
Since the completion of the investigation phase in early 2002, CNS has presented various reports of our study to several campus groups (e.g., Vice Chancellor's Administrative Council, Haas School of Business) and noncampus groups (e.g., UC's Systemwide JOG & CPG, ACUTA's national meeting, Internet2, EDUCAUSE's national meeting, and to a start-up VoIP firm). We would be pleased to present details of our project to any groups that are interested. For more detailed information, please contact Linda Chu, lindachu@socrates.berkeley.edu, 642-5870. For general information and updates on recent developments on Project VOCAL, please visit the Project VOCAL website (http://cns-pao.berkeley.edu/Vocal/).
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Berkeley Computing & Communications,
Volume 12, Number 4 (Fall 2002)
Copyright 2002, The Regents of the University of California