International IPT Design Recommendations

[UCcomp2007]

Background:

A potential customer is looking to deploy an IPT solution that will service 500 phones total accros 10 offices in the US, Europe and Japan. They are insisting that Call Processing and Call Center systems be located inside the US at their HQ. I understand the recommended path would be to deploy multiple clusters, connected via gatekeeers. But due to price, and competetors guarantee that one HQ can service all locations, setting up a Cisco IPT solution with multiple clusters won't be viable to win the opportunity.

My question is, if we deploy a single Cisco cluster based in the U.S HQ. and provision a good worldwide mpls backbone, and give voice priority, will voice quality be good for the international sites?

Also, will there be any issues with IPCC Enterprise to house 5 small call centers off the same IPCC cluster located at the HQ with the agents residing at international sites? The customer needs five small (less than thirty agents in each CC) in five offices located in Europe US and Japan.

Any comments and direction would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

[Chris Deren]

You will encounter major issues with a single cluster design priamrly because of the propagation delay. Huge pipelines will not help you aliviate the delay issue.

I am not even talking about voice calls between these locations, but simple sccp traffic between CM and the endpoint on the other side of the world, especially when you throw IPCC into the picture. Cisco Agent Desktop or CTI OS can not tolerate long delays, you may experience sporadic logouts, long delays between desktop functionallity, etc.

Out of curiosity what competitor is stating they can achive all of this with a single location? Are they proposing a pure VoIP deployment?

Chris

[UCcomp2007]

Chris, thanks for the througough response. You have helped me on a number of issues and I apprecaite the level of detail you provide in your responses.

We have not been given the competetors info, and don't expect to obtain this. Customer is keeping close to their hip.

Based on what you stated above. If we deploy multiple clusters (one for US, one for Europe and one for Japan) will international calls have good quality (as long as we design based on best practices)?

Regards,

[Chris Deren]

I would definitely deploy the 3 clusters with either a GK or interculster trunks in between them, as to the quality it should be OK :-)

Chris

[UCcomp2007]

One last questions Chris. Do you know if UC Business Edition would work? Are their any limitations for BE working with IPCC Express, or connecting to US cluster via intercluster trunks? The Europe and Japan sites only will have 100 users or less. Due to price, we'd like to deploy business edition and IPCC express (with SRST for failover).

[dtran]

I don't see the need to deploy multiple clusters in this case. I am currently running a single cluster of 4 servers support about 1400 phones throughout the US, Canada, China and India and I don't have any voice quality issue and I am using G711 throughout enterprise. I don't think you'll have any voice quality issue to Europe and Japan, I am pretty sure WAN connection to Europe and Japan is much more reliable than China and India. I wouldn't deploy multi clusters in your case, you'll just waste money and add more complications to the environment. I am also running IPCC enterprise with agents throughout US and Canada with no issue. I don't have agent outside of North America so I can't tell anything there. But I think it's still doable in your case just making sure that your WAN is provisioned correctly.

Good luck !!

D