National Library embarks on telephony rip and replace

The National Library of Australia is implementing a new Alcatel-Lucent telephony system as it ditchs an aging PABX setup.

Department documents state that it currently has a number of analogue phone lines, services for connectivity to telecommunication providers and a third party voice mail system which integrates with the PABX system.

“The PABX hardware has reached end-of-life, prompting a review of alternatives for a replacement enterprise telephone system including different management options,” state the documents.

A review of IP telephony systems was performed within the library in which equipment was tested against a predefined selection criteria by staff.

As a result of the pilot testing, an Alcatel-Lucent managed offering is preferred and will be vendor designed and implemented.

The library is purchasing more than 750 Alcatel IP phones, an Alcatel-OmniTouch contact centre and OmniVista network management system.

The OmniVista network management system will need to integrate with the library’s existing Microsoft Active Directory for corporate directory services. The library’s Microsoft Active Directory server resides on a Windows 2003 platform, which will be upgraded to Windows 2008 in the future.

The library technical staff are required to perform level one services such as the ability to add and remove users from the telephone system, configuration of wireless functionality for iPhones and unified communications configuration.

“The primary BiCS (business integrated communications server) and associated software should provide all call handling functionality for the phone system. There should also be a secondary BiCS, which will synchronise with the primary server and provide PABX redundancy upon failure of the primary server,” state the documents. "The communication server will also have to provide network management, call centre functionality, voicemail and unified communications."

The contract is for five years with the option of extending for another two years.

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