Carl Weinschenk spoke with Marquette University CIO Kathy Lang.

Weinschenk: To set the stage, how big is Marquette and what element of the university population did the project cover?
Lang: Marquette has 11,000 students, 7,500 undergraduates and the rest graduate students. We have around 3,500 to 3,700 in the residence halls. When we started the unified communications project, the first thing we did was take out the phones and voice mail in the residence halls. The next thing we did was look at faculty and staff, which is around 3,000 people.

Weinschenk: What led to the decision to take the phones and voice mail systems out of the residence halls?
Lang: We found that 99.1 percent of students had cell phones. We completely took the phones out and bought a pool of phones [for those who wanted a wired phone]. If somebody really wanted one, they could ask for it. We bought 100 – and three people wanted one. And one student who asked had a cell phone on his belt when he did. We saved about $150,000 by eliminating the student phones alone.

Weinschenk: Was there any criticism of that move?
Lang: Not at all. It was a no-brainer for them. They unplug the wired phone and stick it in the closet, so it was a no-brainer.

Weinschenk: So this focused on the faculty and staff. What was the main driver or drivers?
Lang: Our legacy phone system is coming to end of life. So we have to do something for that system. VoIP has good ROI. There are two numbers: The cost of converting to the new system – that figure is going to be less than a completely new legacy phone system -- and ongoing maintenance costs. We believe they also will be cheaper.

Weinschenk: How did you proceed?
Lang: We started slowly implementing the VoIP solution. It is being phased in. [There now] are two voice mail systems. One on the VoIP side, the other on the legacy system. The first goal was to get to one voice mail system, the one on the VoIP system. So we went with Microsoft Communications Server. We also have Microsoft Exchange as the e-mail system.

Weinschenk: What services are you offering to end users?
Lang: The first thing is to be able to listen to voice mail from e-mail. People are just ecstatic about that. Another feature we are adding is connecting cell phones to voice mail. We are setting it up so that if a cell call goes to voice mail, people will be able to listen to the message via e-mail. Presence is based on the Outlook calendar.

Weinschenk: Where are you now?
Lang: The VoIP project includes two new buildings that are going up, a new law school and a new student services building. They will be completely VoIP. And our plan moving forward is to change over building by building -- or to convert to VoIP as an area that is being renovated. It will take at least a couple of years. It depends on funding. We are doing four buildings this year, during the summer.

Weinschenk: What are some of the challenges?
Lang: [The hardest part] is making sure the numbers on the [Cisco] CallManager side are correct, making sure we have the right licensing and then plugging the phone to the system. Most, if the locale is a regular office, plug right into the Ethernet jack. They don’t need additional jacks. The computer and the phone are on the same jack.

Weinschenk: Were there operational issues?
Lang: Probably the biggest issue is that in some areas a number of people share phone numbers. The system says, “Press 1 to get this person, press 2 to get that person.” To get calls to the right person -- some who only had a phone number and a mailbox -- was tricky, especially because voice mail went through both the legacy and VoIP systems. It is a matter of following through to ensure that calls were going to the right location and not getting dropped.

Weinschenk: How are you managing the changeover from legacy to VoIP services?
Lang: We follow a pretty structured project methodology. We have a project manager and we typically have a steering committee and an actual project team. People know their role. They get together and plan it out. We work with a consultant to help us architect the solution. The consultant helps us implement it. Part of that is developing a project plan in addition to the actual milestones that asks what [else] needs to be done. We also developed a communication plan. We determine who we need to tell about the project at what time.

Weinschenk: What did that consist of?
Lang: We did a pilot of about 100 users from IT services and other users across campus. We talk to them, train them and send messages to campus saying, “This is what we are doing.” As we converted people to the new voice mail, by area or perhaps department, we communicate with those affected before we [actually] convert them. So the right people were being communicated with in a just-in-time manner. They knew exactly when their voice mail would change. I think it was very good, adding more of a personal touch. People are very happy with that. The phased approach generated a lot of positive comments around campus. People were excited and asked, “When do I go? I want to go next.” There were no negative reactions to change.

Weinschenk: Who were the main vendors and the consultant?
Lang: [The vendors were] Cisco and Microsoft. We used a third-party provider that helped us architect the whole solution called Berbee, which is now part of CDW. We probably could have done it ourselves, but one of our strategies is to bring in a consultant to verify that what we are doing are the right things and to make sure we are not missing something, especially with the new technology. This is a strategy that we use with all our projects.

Weinschenk: So you’ve made this type of significant change before?
Lang: Not from a network side. We implemented a new ERP solution in 2004. We went to the PeopleSoft student information system. Both projects were successful. Part of the reason is that we manage our projects in such a structured manner. We follow that methodology in all our projects because we know it works very well.

Weinschenk: How do you think a VoIP transition differs between a university and enterprise setting?
Lang: The only thing is [in a university environment] people getting voice mail via e-mail could be using a number of different clients. Some use Macs, some PCs. There were some glitches with people being able to receive voice mail via e-mail because of the disparity in clients and different tools they were using. We worked with them and, when necessary, came up with workarounds. In a corporate environment, they might be able to dictate and say, “You are going to use this end point to receive e-mail.”