Huffman Trucking Telephony Systems Analysis Essay -- Business Analysis

A Physical Location Background Huffman Trucking has offices paired with plants in four states: California, Missouri, New Jersey, and Ohio. Huffman has grown both organically and through acquisition. The tremendous growth experienced by the company has also shined the light on some growing pains. Each of the four locations have independently managed networks including telephony which has resulted in disconnected systems that require independent investment for upgrades, support, and maintenance and lacks the ability to leverage investments across the organization. The end result includes multiple proprietary telephony platforms and gateways that leave the organization unable to reduce overhead cost in this area. There is some good news found in some levels of common platforms among several locations. The focus of this paper will be to identify the common strengths regarding the types of systems, define the physical extent of the systems, and describe the services available. In addition opportunities to levera ge existing investments and reduce cost will be identified. B Network Commonality and Variance According to the network diagrams provided for each facility by Huffman there are some consistencies among the various facilities. The Missouri and Ohio office locations currently have an Avaya Digital Phone System installed that communicates through the use of a token-ring. Similarly the Missouri and Ohio plant locations have commonality by employing a token-ring to enable communication of several analog handset terminals to a mainframe. In the plant all of the phones also communicate through the token-ring without the benefit of any type of digital phone system. Other consistencies, albeit to a lesser extent, ca... ... manage all types of digital communication. Huffman would need to consider how much depreciation has occurred for each of the current hardware assets (ie. PBX's, handsets, etc) by location in order to identify a phased approach that would minimize disruption and maximize savings potential. For example, if a PBX at the Missouri office has recently been purchased and has several years before being fully depreciated then the company may want to consider prioritizing another facility first. Certain components such as scanners will still require a analog TDM gateway which means this will have to be considered in any proposed network design. II References VoIP. (n.d.). The American Heritage ® Science Dictionary. Retrieved May 28, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/VoIP Huffman Trucking Telephony Systems Analysis Essay -- Business Analysis A Physical Location Background Huffman Trucking has offices paired with plants in four states: California, Missouri, New Jersey, and Ohio. Huffman has grown both organically and through acquisition. The tremendous growth experienced by the company has also shined the light on some growing pains. Each of the four locations have independently managed networks including telephony which has resulted in disconnected systems that require independent investment for upgrades, support, and maintenance and lacks the ability to leverage investments across the organization. The end result includes multiple proprietary telephony platforms and gateways that leave the organization unable to reduce overhead cost in this area. There is some good news found in some levels of common platforms among several locations. The focus of this paper will be to identify the common strengths regarding the types of systems, define the physical extent of the systems, and describe the services available. In addition opportunities to levera ge existing investments and reduce cost will be identified. B Network Commonality and Variance According to the network diagrams provided for each facility by Huffman there are some consistencies among the various facilities. The Missouri and Ohio office locations currently have an Avaya Digital Phone System installed that communicates through the use of a token-ring. Similarly the Missouri and Ohio plant locations have commonality by employing a token-ring to enable communication of several analog handset terminals to a mainframe. In the plant all of the phones also communicate through the token-ring without the benefit of any type of digital phone system. Other consistencies, albeit to a lesser extent, ca... ... manage all types of digital communication. Huffman would need to consider how much depreciation has occurred for each of the current hardware assets (ie. PBX's, handsets, etc) by location in order to identify a phased approach that would minimize disruption and maximize savings potential. For example, if a PBX at the Missouri office has recently been purchased and has several years before being fully depreciated then the company may want to consider prioritizing another facility first. Certain components such as scanners will still require a analog TDM gateway which means this will have to be considered in any proposed network design. II References VoIP. (n.d.). The American Heritage ® Science Dictionary. Retrieved May 28, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/VoIP