Archived decisions

Contact: Jos Creese, Head of IT Services, 8 200 7436 ([email protected])

3. Summary

3.1 The Winchester Castle Complex telephone services are provided by a GEC BTEX exchange which was installed second-hand in 1987. The telephone system is increasingly costly and difficult to maintain and presents a growing risk to the County Council's services to the public.

3.2 This report seeks approval to purchase and install a new IP telephony system at an estimated cost of £1.125 million.

4. Reasons

4.1 The current telephone system for the main Castle Complex buildings for both incoming and outgoing calls is now obsolete. As spare parts become scarce, there is an increasing risk that the County Council telephone system will fail, resulting in an inability to take or receive telephone calls. Replacement is therefore essential. At the same time, the County Council can take advantage of developments in technology which allow new functionality for telephone services to, support mobile and flexible working and the Hantsdirect Contact Centre programme in particular.

4.2 The new design will also increase systems resilience by designing components in separate locations to provide an automatic fail-over across the Hampshire Public Services Network (HPSN) in the event of service interruptions.

4.3 The overall design is based on a corporate telephony strategy developed in conjunction with consultants, 4C. This strategy concluded that replacement of the telephone system should include IP telephony technology, and this was approved at the e-Government and ICT Steering Group on the 30 November 2005.

4.4 This work is also directly linked to the project to upgrade the central core data network, which will reduce costs of implementation and ensure a consistency in technology and technology integration by running the projects in parallel.

5. Replacement of the Castle Complex telephone facilities & business case

5.1 Existing Castle phone system moving out of support

The existing GEC BTEX exchange continues to function adequately although it is increasingly difficult to find companies prepared to provide maintenance, and some spares are in very short supply. Siemens currently support this installation as a sub-contractor to Unisys, but they have given warning that they will be forced to cease their support service in the near future. The BTEX was one of the most popular and successful exchanges used in the UK, but there are now only a handful left. This replacement has been postponed several times in recent years. There is clearly a significant and increasing risk to the County Council's business as the BTEX grows older.

5.2 IP telephony

IP telephony can be described as using data communications to provide voice services all the way to the desktop. This means that each phone is a data device connected to the building's local area network (data network) which is also used to provide the Hantsnet desktop service. There is no dedicated phone wiring for IP telephony.

IP telephony is the emerging standard for all future voice provision worldwide and is the basis for BT's 21st Century Network project which will see the mass migration of all customers from old style public switched telephone network (PSTN) to a new IP (data) based network. In due course all BT customer equipment will become IP based. Traditional private branch exchange (PBX) technology will soon be obsolete and will only be able to participate in IP telephony via gateways which convert old voice traffic to data with consequent loss of quality and flexibility.

IP telephony for the main County Council telephone system will allow compatibility with the Hantsdirect contact centre and also integration with any future applications where voice and data technologies are brought together or converged.

Moving the County Council to IP telephony safeguards compatibility with the evolving telecomm's industry and ensures that we are not investing in obsolete technology. A telephony strategy based on IP telephony was agreed and adopted by the e-Government & ICT Steering Group in November 2005.

5.3 Phone system resilience

The existing BTEX has some resilience with 2 processors and 8 hour battery back up. However, it is a single piece of equipment in one location with all connections to BT's network through one set of trunking. Damage to the exchange or the BT lines could lead to complete loss of telephony services. It is proposed to design the BTEX replacement with resilient components in separate locations. As a result services will not be interrupted through the loss of equipment or phone lines in any one location and IP phones can utilise services from more than one central infrastructure (fail over).

5.4 Availability of telephony facilities and features

The existing telephone services are very basic and do not deliver the features or facilities which are commonplace in business today. Development of the recent corporate telephony strategy involved consultation with users throughout the County Council, and many departments identified needs for new facilities. For example:

· Support for flexible working. Ideally staff should have access to their extension number, together with the associated feature set including messaging, at any Council location, at home, or whilst on the move. An extension number will cease to be a physical asset and will become a means of contacting the "owner" irrespective of location. Users will be able to create and manage their own profiles through their desktop, for example a "home" profile and an "office" profile. The mobility application will seek to deliver the call to the most appropriate device based on the set profile.

· The ability to easily integrate email with voicemail and FAX through Outlook (unified messaging). In the case of voicemail access may be provided from Email to stored voice messages or by translation of voice into a text message.

· Universal access to common telephony facilities with a rich feature-set.

· Flexibility and reduced costs when managing change (such as office moves).

· Improved and easily available management information.

· Self management, e.g. the option to provide users with facilities to make their own local configuration changes.

· The service needs to be able to react to the voice marketplace to ensure that customers benefit from downward pressure on prices.

These will be important features in supporting new ways of working for the Ashburton Court redevelopment project.

5.5 Scalability

New IP based telephony is easily scalable. Peripheral devices such as phones simply access central server facilities across the data network in the same way that Hantsnet desktops access central Hantsnet server facilities. There is no provision of specific "ports" or "sockets" for the addition of new phones. While the central servers do have overall limits, these are quite high, so it is possible to add phones and other services without needing to increase central hardware investment. Server licences are required for each phone connected.

5.6 Value for money

It would cost less to replace the BTEX with older style telephony, for example, a Nortel Meridian implementation, but the saving would not be large and the system would soon become obsolete. Most of the savings would arise from deployment of cheaper data switches not designed to provide IP telephony, while the actual telephone system would cost much the same as an IP telephony implementation.

6. Legal implications

None.

7. Financial implications

The equipment, installation services and support will be undertaken as part of our existing HPSN managed service contract by Unisys, who have indicated that the cost will be £1,125,000. This will be funded from savings made in the Unisys contract extension last year and the existing income.

8. Personnel implications

None.

9. Impact assessment

Race and equality impact assessment has been considered in the development of this report and no adverse impact has been identified.

10. Crime prevention issues

None.

11. Views of the Local County Councillor

None sought. The proposals here relate to provision of HPSN services in support of County Council business on the Winchester Castle Complex.

Recommendation

That the Executive Member grants permission for:

1. The expenditure of £1,125k for the replacement of the Winchester Castle Complex telephone system.

OR

Section 100D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB: the list excludes:

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

None.