The project explained
The first stage of the project was to install a business telephone system to meet the requirements of Innogy and Cogen. The aim was simply to deliver standard telephony to all users together with new CTI applications.
One of the early project goals was to ensure that the system was as reliable and effective as Cogen's preferred PBX, the Siemens ISDX. In addition, the system needed to be capable of being managed both locally for first-level support, and remotely by Innogy's central team for second-level support.
Another of the project's main aims was to deliver a communications solution that was more cost effective than the ISDX. 'On the surface, the NBX is quite cost-effective compared with the ISDX. But when you consider the cost of 3Com IP digital handsets, at about £200 each compared with between £30 and £40 for an analogue handset for the ISDX, some people are going to question whether VoIP is economically viable,' says Legge.
However, Legge estimates that in terms of overall capital costs, an NBX plus digital handsets costs around the same as an ISDX plus analogue handsets. Even so, he believes that for smaller sites with few engineers, £1,000 to connect five people and their handsets to a voice VPN is a negligible cost compared with putting in an ISDX for five staff.
Legge believes the main savings for Cogen will come from a reduction in its annual PBX maintenance bill, which is typically high. His team is investigating the costs of maintaining 3Com NBXs. 'At the moment, all our ISDXs  about 30  are on a huge five-year maintenance contract with Kingston Telecommunications. Deploying a single NBX instead of an ISDX doesn't make much difference to the overall maintenance cost, but I need Kingston to break out the cost of maintaining the NBX from the main contract,' he says.
Legge, who intends to put the NBX maintenance out to tender with a couple of other companies to compare quotes, expects maintenance will be very much cheaper than with the ISDX. 'We think it will be about the same as maintaining data networking equipment, about 10 to 15 percent annually of the capital equipment cost,' he says.
The second phase of the project due to start this month is to connect the phone system to Cogen's voice VPN, which Innogy has interconnecting all its sites. While the voice VPN works well with the traditional systems, the choice of a LAN/IP telephony system means the IP PBX needs to integrate seamlessly with the existing voice topology. The company also needs the new system to be part of the existing dial plan for users.
The third major phase, likely to begin in the latter half of 2001, is to link the architecture to customer sites via the company's WAN, again deploying 3Com NBX 100 chassis and IP handsets rather than a Siemens ISDX. The goal is to enable easier cost-effective communications with smaller on-site teams over the voice/data network. The WAN deployment will also make it easier and cheaper for customers to contact Cogen.
The intention is for Cogen/Innogy staff to remain within contact at whichever site they are located, and to provide the flexibility to transfer voice communications with Cogen staff as they move between existing locations or to new sites.
'At the moment, our ISDXs each have a different site-based identifier code. This makes our internal dial plan more complex than one built around the 3Com NBX,' says Legge. Today, when an engineer moves from one Cogen site to another, there is no guarantee that he will have the same extension, for instance. It also means the ISDX has to be reconfigured with additional extensions as engineers move from site to site.
When NBXs are widely deployed, because the extension is based on IP addressing, it remains the same as the engineer moves from site to site. Also, since all NBXs and IP handsets will be identified as belonging to the same Cogen IP domain, no PBX reprogramming is needed. The engineer simply plugs his IP phone into the nearest socket and it works immediately.
The fact that the administration of the NBX system can be managed locally by Cogen people, rather than by central Innogy staff, will become key in the third phase. It will save time and effort when simple changes must be made  such as adding staff details  since no engineer needs to visit the site.
