Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project

Strategies and solutions for successful VoIP deployments

Justify your network investment

• The step-by-step approach to VoIP deployment and management enables you to plan early and properly for successful VoIP integration with your existing systems, networks, and applications.
• The detailed introduction offers a common grounding for members of both the telephony and data networking communities.
• IT managers and project leaders are armed with details on building a business case for VoIP, including details of return-on-investment (ROI) analysis and justification.
• A VoIP deployment is presented as a major IT project, enabling you to understand the steps involved and the required resources.
• The comprehensive look at quality of service and tuning describes when and where to use them in a VoIP deployment. These are often the most complex topics in VoIP; you'll get smart recommendations on which techniques to use in various circumstances.
• You learn how to plan for VoIP security, including prevention, detection, and reaction.

Voice over IP (VoIP) is the telephone system of the future. Problem is, VoIP is not yet widely deployed, so there are few skilled practitioners today. As you make your move to VoIP, how will you know how to make VoIP work and keep it working well? What changes will you need to make without disrupting your business? How can you show your return on this investment?

Many books contain technical details about VoIP, but few explain in plain language how to make it run successfully in an enterprise. Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project provides the detailed plans you need to be successful in your organization's deployment of VoIP. Through their years of work in the field, authors John Q. Walker and Jeffrey T. Hicks bring a project-oriented approach to VoIP, with much-needed clarity on getting VoIP to work well.

Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project starts with simple concepts, each chapter building on the knowledge from the last. Although not a technical manual, you learn about the standards, such as H.323, G.711, and Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP), and the implications they have on your VoIP system. Most importantly, you'll gain expert advice and a systematic guide on how to make VoIP work for your organization.

This volume is in the Network Business Series offered by Cisco Press. Books in this series provide IT executives, decision makers, and networking professionals with pertinent information on today's most important technologies and business strategies.

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John Q. Walker, Ph.D, was a founder of Ganymede Software, heading the software development team there before it joined NetIQ Corporation in spring 2000. Currently, he is the president of Zenph Studios, Inc., makers of multimedia software. In earlier positions, he managed teams responsible for designing and developing high-speed networking at IBM. Dr. Walker holds a Ph.D. in software engineering; his master's degree focused on system testing.

Jeffrey T. Hicks is a Software Architect at NetQoS, Inc., the industry's fastest growing network performance management company.  For the last 8 years, he has been architecting and designing software products to help enterprises and managed service providers deploy, secure, and manage Voice over IP (VoIP) solutions. Jeffrey is a VoIP technology expert and has published numerous articles about VoIP. In past jobs, Jeffrey led the development of Ganymede Software's award-winning Chariot product and developed innovative network communications technology at IBM. Mr. Hicks holds a bachelor of science degree in computer engineering from Auburn University and a master of engineering degree from North Carolina State University .