Retrofit Cleanup

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Retrofit Cleanup When the implementation team began the conversion to IP Telephony, an IP call center solution was not yet in place. The decision was made to remove as many lines off the PBX as possible, conduct a partial retrofit, and convert everyone except for call center agents, their backups, and any business-critical analog lines. The team conducted a final cleanup at the end of the conversion to ensure that it would have ample time to carefully review all analog lines housed in the same buildings as call center agents. It would have been detrimental to the implementation team if we had accidentally removed a business-critical phone line used by our call center team. Because we were careful in our decision to remove only those lines that were traced and identified, we are proud of the fact that during the course of the year, we did not bring down any call center agents or their designated analog lines during the retrofit. After the retrofit was over and the dust was settled, the cleanup phase began. "We had to examine each situation separately and make the decision, for example, whether to pull out an analog line or replace it with CallManager," Bourdet says. "If a line was designated 'critical use,' we replaced it with an outside line." Other situations included engineering lab applications with call-in numbers for product demos and high-speed modem lines. The cleanup ensures that all lines removed and disconnected from the PBX are not business critical and provides ample time to carefully review all the "unidentified" analog lines and trace them in an attempt to find owners. By doing this, the implementation team was able to carefully remove nearly 17,000 ports from the PBX�3000 of which were analog lines. Most enterprise companies like Cisco have thousands of lines that, through the years, have either been forgotten about or are simply unused. By being mindful of this extra step, the Cisco cleanup effort eliminated thousands of unused lines and resulted in annual cost savings of up to U.S. $42,000. TIP Keep your original cutsheets so that you have a working list of the various lines that you need to review again during the cleanup phase. Maintaining this log saves you time during the cleanup process. TIP Seldom is there the opportunity or time to trace every unverified or questionable line on your network. Use the cleanup phase to ensure that every line going onto your network is viable, and disconnect those lines that are no longer in use. Note all untraced lines on your cutsheets for future reference. Because of the accelerated pace of the project, a guest phone might be functioning incorrectly, or a legacy phone or missed wall bracket might get lost in the shuffle. The cleanup effort provides an opportunity to walk the floor once more to ensure a clean 100 percent campus conversion. "One of the things that made it much easier for us was that the implementation team gave us a printout of what was remaining in the PBX," Bourdet says. "We started working with that and then went through a period of discovery with the users to determine the best course of action." Paying close attention to the applications that were left running through the PBX and working with users to determine what their needs were allowed the cleanup team to tailor a solution that fit the needs of the user and of the organization. Using the same individuals for the cleanup effort as for the PBX lease returns, the team conducted the cleanup building by building, concentrating on Cisco-owned equipment only after the lease return efforts were completed. As of April 2001, San Jose still had more than 22,000 ports remaining on the PBX. One year later, those ports were reduced to less than 2000. Today, both G3R PBXs have been removed, and not a single PBX port remains active. Chapter 7 provides a complete review of the PBX removal process and the final cleanup effort.

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