As the modern version of the military adage goes, "When the going gets tough, the phones ring off the hook." These days, those calls are increasingly running over IP.
by Richard Grigonis
The US government is steadily increasing its budget overall for information technology and its subset, VoIP migration ($65 billion proposed by the White House for 2006, up from $60 billion in 2005). An April 2005 survey of 350 local, state and federal government IT professionals by Network General Corporation reveals that VoIP is will be a top priority for 57% of US government organizations over the next 12 months.
When VON Magazine last visited the subject of government VoIP a year ago, we found that telecom-related vendors had many bureaucratic hoops to jump through in order to sell their wares to the government or its chosen subcontractors. Today, there are three ways to ease the ordeal:
First, if a telecom vendor has the money, it can simply acquire a company that has successfully negotiated all the obstacles and is already an established player in the government marketspace. Both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have lately strengthened their IT divisions through such acquisitions. More recently, Nortel Networks acquired the mid-sized (1700-employee) government IT contractor PEC Solutions, in a US$448 million deal. Bob Dunn, Nortel's general manager of federal solutions, says "The PEC acquisition automatically gives us presence in the government and more voices and feet on the street. It provides services for federal, state and local government customers." Since Nortel is Canadian, a separate US board and subsidiary (called Nortel PEC Solutions) was established to mollify US government concerns over security. Fortunately, about 80% of PEC employees have US government security clearances, allowing the company to continue and enlarge upon previous PEC government contracts in the defense, homeland security and intelligence sectors and to explore new opportunities in civil government and new types of law enforcement systems.
Second, a vendor can develop a warm working relationship (i.e., schmooze) with partners already in the sector. This sounds even more complicated than 'going it alone' but the events of 9/11 have encouraged the government to come up with new ways to facilitate the acceptance process.
As Nortel's Bob Dunn says: "It was always difficult to make inroads with government, but after 9/11 the government began to streamline the process. Still one must be agile, just as in the commercial sector. We've had no problem putting our studies together, coordinating with their prime partners-and our integrator partners-GD [General Dynamics] and CSC [Computer Sciences Corp.] one of the largest providers of IT integration for government. Our validation testing employs other integrators such as Booz Allen Hamilton. And yes, while there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen sometimes, everyone seems to be weighing in with the right questions. The technology experts, i.e., the network architects at Nortel, take back a lot of those questions and suggestions and get them answered and approved. It both helps the government and improves the quality of our commercial applications."
The third, and perhaps most facetious way of selling new VoIP equipment to the government, is to already be in the government market-as are many large and well-established companies.
John Winters, VP of NET Federal, also known as Network Equipment Technologies (they do most of their business as www.net.com), says: "It's much easier selling from an established position with the government than it is coming in from the outside. It's interesting, particularly with VoIP, that there are quite a number of companies approaching the government from established positions. We happen to be one of them, but certainly the 800 pound gorilla is Cisco. They do about a billion dollars of business each year with the US government. Cisco pretty much owns the small and medium router business in the DoD [Department of Defense], where you would expect to see VoIP add-ons. Cisco is clearly a market leader who we often run into, but it's certainly not the only one out there. Nortel is a big government vendor, and they've got a big play in VoIP, as does Lucent."
Another major player, Avaya, has long maintained dedicated government solutions and services teams that provide global installation and maintenance support to US Government agencies. Indeed, members of the Avaya team were honored by the US Army for their efforts to restore communications at the Pentagon following the 9/11 attack.
Avaya's Government Solutions team is based in Arlington, Virginia (www1.avaya.com/enterprise/gov/). The US government remains Avaya's biggest customer; Avaya sells to them via various prime contracts, subcontracts and purchasing agreements. Among them: blanket purchase agreements with the Department of Treasury, US House of Representatives, US Postal Service and US Supreme Court; a Voice, Video and Data contract with the US Navy; and blanket purchase agreements and federal supply schedules with the General Services Administration (www1.avaya.com/enterprise/gov/gsaschedule). (An Avaya IP-enabled communications server delivers call center services for the GSA's Federal Supply Services, supporting customers in all 10 GSA regions.)
Indeed, Avaya dominated our coverage over the past year, since it deployed a 90,000-user voice messaging network for the Treasury, a 60,000 user network linking 12 US Navy bases in the San Diego, California, region, and server-based converged communications systems on board all 12 of the Navy's active aircraft carriers.
Military vs. Non-Military
"There are two ways to look at the government voice market," says NET Federal's John Winters. "One way is to view it from the traditional perspective of the big, centrally-run voice switches, particularly the DoD government voice networks, such as the DSN [Defense Switched Network], the largest voice network in the government, which basically consists of Class 4 and 5 voice switches. The DSN is run by DISA [Defense Information System Agency], which is the DoD's communications 'company'. They're like Verizon to a Fortune 500 company. They go out there and actually implement the services that are necessary for the armed services to run their communications infrastructure."
"The other way to view the government voice market," says Winters, "is to consider the voice networks that have come about as a result of recent military actions, where you've got very mobile military organizations that are seldom in fixed positions for a very long time. They need to be able to nail up voice and data communications very quickly. The soldiers of today, whether they're sitting in their facilities back in the states, or deployed out to a site, expect to have the same, uniform type of communications capability."
"I think VoIP lends itself extremely well to the rapid deployment type of force that's now out there," says Winters. "We're seeing a lot of adoption of this new technology, but the larger, more entrenched government organizations like DISA are taking a slower and more measured view of how they're going to migrate to the point where they're mostly using VoIP, even though they are absolutely convinced they're going to end up at that point, and eventually all transmission of what I call 'voice data' as well as standard data will be over IP."
NET Federal, recognizing that the government will have a hybrid TDM/IP network for some time, now offers the SHOUT, an intelligent VoIP gateway and session controller with advanced signaling support (SS7, H.323, and SIP) and with built-in integrated IVR (Interactive Voice Response) capabilities. It's been accepted by both commercial customers and the US government.
"We've entered into the federal government VoIP foray, mainly with a gateway box that provides the glue or bridge, if you will, between legacy phone networks and newer IP backbones," says Winters. "It can also act as a SIP-to-H.323 mitigation gateway. SIP phones can use our gateway, for example, to communicate with legacy phones. The SHOUT is used in the government mainly for transmissions of specifically secure legacy telephone units over IP backbones."
DISA, JTIC and the DSN
This year, there's been much talk about DISA (www.disa. mil) and the DSN as their normally measured pace toward VoIP has quickened a bit. To be specific, DISA describes itself as "a combat support agency responsible for planning, engineering, acquiring, fielding, and supporting global net-centric solutions to serve the needs of the President, Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, and other DoD Components, under all conditions of peace and war." DISA must certify that all Defense Department "C4" systems (Command, Control, Communications and Computers) are interoperable. Specifically, the Defense Department's Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, does testing and bestows the DISA JITC certification required for all voice networking equipment connecting to the US Department of Defense core network. JTIC ensures that products are secure, operate optimally in a multi-vendor environment, deliver exacting levels of performance under duress and offer whatever unique features and functionality are necessary for national security.
"The commercial benefits of VoIP would also benefit an operator like DISA," says Nortel's Bob Dunn. "A couple of years ago, DISA started asking the same questions that the best carriers asked: 'How can I save money? How can I increase applications? How can people work online in a more cost-effective manner?' They became very interested in VoIP. So, our discussions with them began and we did an extensive study and analysis of not only interoperability but also testing of IA [Information Assurance] certified by JTIC."
"This all eventually led to our recent multifunction switch announcement," says Dunn, "that's an upgrade to the DISA networks' TDM backbone, which helps them ultimately migrate to VoIP. To elaborate: if you picture concentric circles where the multifunction switch application is at the core, we're going to upgrade that core to VoIP to save them money, offer MLPP [Multilevel Precedence and Preemption, which stipulates a relative priority ranking order of all call flows on a hop-by-hop basis from a calling device through a Voice network to the called device], and other assured services."
"From that core, there will be Nortel Meridian SL100 PBXs out at the military bases," says Dunn. "This is where our relationship expands beyond DISA's core networks. If you think about these locations, we can do the same thing and offer advanced functions at bases having SL100s. From there, many bases are interested in 'survivable remotes', which can be a Meridian 1 PBX today, but can be upgraded later to a Call Server 1000, which is our softswitch. Not only would this be a part of the SL100 'umbilical cord', if you will, but it can also run as a standalone PBX. So you can have the best of both worlds under one network management system. From there, we continue on down, deploying IP phones on everyone's desk and the installed applications, such as converged apps, at the desktop."
"So that's our vision, beyond just the simple implementation of VoIP," says Dunn. "It's more of a migration path and we think it's a broader opportunity, both for Nortel and the US Government."
Dunn adds: "Some of our competitors would say: 'Hey, we know data better than anybody. You can do a hard-cut right now to new IP technology, and it won't be a problem.' We took more of an evolutionary approach, however, wherein we said 'Hey, you have a TDM network today, so let's take it slow, let's go at your own pace, and we'll migrate to IP base-by-base as you see fit, when your timeline allows and your skilled resources are available. This is a project that will probably take 12 to 18 months, and we're going to go at the proper pace."
"For now we're migrating the core, so we'll be working mostly on the trunk side," says Dunn. "From there, we'll build out to the line side. Different bases have different immediate needs. Some bases are upgrading their data infrastructure too. But right now, as far as this team is concerned, we're focused on DISA's core. We also have a team that focuses on DoD, another one that focuses on civilian stuff-DHS [Department of Homeland Security] falls under the civilian category. We also have a Special Programs Group and a Services Group that will help us get the word out as well. And every one of these departments has a sort of Nortel professional services team assigned to it."
All's Fair. . .
"All in all, few marketspaces are fairer than the US government, in the sense that all large procurements have to be competed," says NET Federal's Winters. "Everybody has to operate under the same rules. There isn't the same potential for everything from nepotism to technical religion, if you will, that you come across in the commercial sector. Yes, the government is a different kind of 'animal'. I've dealt with it a long time and I can't say that I've always won. But I've certainly always had the chance to win, and I think that's the best you can ask for."
|
