Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project
Product Description
Strategies and solutions for successful VoIP deploymentsNetwork Business Series
Justify your network investmentThe 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 detai… More >>
Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project
This book is well focused to management people moving to VOIP, it has a good chapter introducing the subject but nothing too technical, in ROI it gives very nice arguments to deploy it. Best Chapters i read were the ones talking about QOS and SLA. They were good and showed really well explanations about it.
I would recommend this book to be bought by project people or to add to your library.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book offers good strategies for implementing VoIP. It covers the feasibility studies required and pre and post evaluation of the network. Technical details are covered well but the most important aspects such as QoS, SLA’s are explained in some sort of details, which is an important area when dealing with VoIP.
I used this book as one of my main reference in my final year project with UOL BSc in CIS.
I recommend this book not just for Engineers, Technicians, Managers and IT staff, but also for anyone wishing to learn about the basis of VoIP.
Rating: 5 / 5
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 could’ve 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 a 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 weren’t a copyright violation, I’d probably copy the entire chapter and hand it out to any of my existing and potential VoIP customers. Better still, I’ll by them a copy of this book.
Subsequent chapters of the book’s 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. I’ve 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!
Rating: 5 / 5
I recently read the book titled “Taking Charge Of Your VoIP Project” by John Q. Walker and Jeffrey T. Hicks. ISBN: 1587200929.
The title is a great reference for understanding VoIP technology and helps identify the many aspects that one must consider for a successful deployment of Voice over IP. Reading this book ahead of time will empower the reader with the lingo, technology and solutions to be effective when leading a team.
The book starts out by giving the reader an understanding of the basic technology concepts surrounding traditional voice networks, or Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN) and then goes right into the basic technologies that allow Voice over IP (Data) to be a viable alternative to the traditional phone networks.
Chapter 2, Building a Business Case for VoIP, gives the reader good information to ponder over and helps identify purpose for building a case for a VoIP solution.
The next chapter, “Planning for VoIP” is one of the larger chapters and for good reason. After all, anyone in business knows that planning determines whether the project will go smoothly with little surprise or whether it’s a disaster. In this chapter you’ll learn about reliability, call quality assessment, and over all VoIP readiness assessment, among other things.
Another great chapter is Chapter 5, “Quality of Service and Tuning”. Probably one of the biggest challenges that an organization will face. QoS is challenging due to the complexity of a true end-to-end QoS solution in an already complex data network. Accomplishing QoS requires in-depth knowledge of the existing data network. Furthermore, the communication to others on the team of what it’s going to take to get the network “up to snuff” to support VoIP will be a task in and of it self. It makes ATM technology look quite attractive. The chapter has quite a bit of detail; however the authors don’t drop the reader over the deep end of the technologies.
I would recommend this book to those that are anticipating implementing Voice over IP in their network, those that are in the process of piloting Voice over IP or even those that are in the midst of a VoIP implementation would benefit from this title.
The book is best suited for Project Managers, management, telecommunication and Data networking personnel. Really and truly, most anyone would benefit from reading this title. It covers such a broad range of information that having a well educated project team is going to ensure that the project goes smoothly and all things are considered. This book does an excellent job of presenting all of the issues that personnel involved in a Voice over IP project should be aware of to ensure success. It gives the reader a great appreciation for the complexities and helps a great deal with ironing out a good sound strategy.
This book has several figures, tables and diagrams. Like the old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words”. This statement holds true in the title. Like I always say, pictures are good.
The book covers everything you’d think about and everything you wouldn’t think about.
Coming from the data side of a VoIP solution, I thought I had enough figured out to make a VoIP project a success. This titled made me think about issues that I would have otherwise over looked. Especially issues relating to traditional telecommunications.
Don’t start you project without this book. It may end up costing you more than this book in mistakes if you don’t.
Rating: 5 / 5
Excellent book if you are looking for “in-depth” crash course in to VoIP. The amazing part was vendor neutral tone. Even though it came out of Cisco Press, it hardly preached any specific vendor. It was mostly focused on the fundamentals.
However the book lacks a decent index section. Hardly any important words are mentioned.
Rating: 5 / 5