Canada’s universities have to deliver advanced information and communication infrastructures to a constantly changing user base. For a university, having a dynamic technology environment can be part of its appeal to students and research dollars. The challenge is to deliver quality service to a distributed, demanding, and constantly changing user base.

“The University of Toronto is the biggest in Canada, and one of the top five in North America,” Debbie Stewart, Director of Telecommunications at the  U of T, tells Telemanagement. “We have 150 buildings scattered over three campuses.”

That’s a lot of real estate to deliver voice and data services to.

“For most locations, on the voice side we are contracted with Bell Canada with Centrex service,” says Stewart. “The University is very decentralized – we also have about six other PBXs.”

The U of T’s contract with Bell runs until 2013, and the University is seriously looking at what type of technology and service profile will suit it beyond that. Moving both voice and data onto one IP-based network has its appeal, but also some serious risks and challenges. From Ms. Stewart’s perspective, Unified Communications is a definite option.

“On the device side, at this point in time we have no VoIP service,” says Stewart. “However, we are about to conduct some discovery with regard to Unified Communications, to see if we can potentially have faculty and staff managing their voice mail and e-mail from one mail box.”

Forks in the road

McGill University in Montreal has many of the same challenges as the U of T, but a very different telecommunications profile.

“We have a Nortel TDM,” says Gary Bernstein, McGill’s Director of Network and Communications Services (NCS), adding that he is unclear about the direction Avaya is going in with enterprises using legacy PBXs. Bernstein has read most of the literature that’s been published on the Avaya purchase of Nortel’s enterprise assets, and thinks things are secure in the short to medium term – but there is an uncertain longer term future for the Nortel PBX technology.

“My view is that if you are an owner of some recent Nortel technology, then you’re ok for a year or two. Then slowly but surely it will integrate with Avaya, which is fine.” 

Art Exner, Director of Communications and Infrastructure, Information Services, at the University of Regina – which has a VoIP-enabled Nortel Meridian 1 Option 81C PBX that supports the TDM sets – has a similar view of the move to Avaya.

“In the short term we are not terribly concerned about Avaya. We had a high degree of confidence that there would be a vendor to purchase this aspect of Nortel’s business and to continue to run it, given the installed base.”

Exner sees Avaya as having been one of the better options. The U of R had regular communication with account reps from Nortel as they went through the process.

“They assured us there was a game plan. Following the announcement, Avaya was fairly proactive in distributing materials to customers. And the new account team included some familiar Nortel faces.”

The U of R has rolled out a fairly substantial VoIP implementation – all Nortel, and all working fine according to Exner. But universities with large legacy Nortel PBXs are also looking at what other options are out there. Bernstein is a fan of Microsoft Corp’s Office Communication Server (OCS).

“I have been using OCS personally for over a year now,” says Bernstein, “and from a functionality perspective I wouldn’t give it up. It does what I have always wanted a VoIP system to do.”

For Bernstein, that means much more than voice. In setting up the call for the Telemanagement interview, for example, Bernstein’s administrative assistant put the number in his calendar, which he then clicked on at the scheduled time. It doesn’t matter if you separate the numbers with a period or a dash, OCS will figure it out.

“We have found that the quality from OCS to OCS can be even better than the TDM, but the quality through the TDM can suffer,” says Bernstein. “And some people using cell phones have reported that the quality isn’t that good.”

As a result, despite Bernstein’s very real enthusiasm for OCS, McGill is taking more of an ‘evolutionary, as opposed to a ‘revolutionary’ approach to a wider OCS roll-out. There is also the fact that OCS isn’t right for all people – at least not yet.

“We are adopting a wait-and-see approach, mostly because of quality issues, but also to a certain extent because if you use OCS you really need a PC.”

Who then is a candidate for an OCS trial? Bernstein says this is not a technology for trades’ people or others who would not be inclined to migrate to full functionality such as video or screen sharing.

“It’s for the person who picks up the phone and wants to dial someone, a person who would understand and use presence. My assistant, for example, really likes presence, because she can know when I’m available or not. In effect, calendaring is a good definer for the first cut. If you aren’t using calendaring, then you probably aren’t a candidate for an OCS trial.”

A new student

“Students have pretty high expectations of the technology environments they work in – and we generally meet those expectations,” says Exner from the U of R. “We are touting the University as leading edge in terms of technology.”

At the U of R there are single dorm lines as well as apartment-style residences with shared lines, with students using calling cards for long distance calls over the PSTN. Everyone has high speed internet access.

“We support 2,000 handsets,” says Exner. “These are in student residences, staff offices, and for faculty and grad students as well as some public places, classrooms, etc.”

But in universities across Canada students are arriving with very different technology expectations compared to even a few years ago. Most now rely on cell phones for voice, and expect high-speed access – ideally wireless – that can support their data needs as well as popular communications applications like Skype and Google Talk.

“We have 3,900 ‘pillows’ for students in residence,” says Bernstein from McGill. “Historically, we have had 3,900 PBX lines, with students ordering on a pay-per-service basis, with a free dial tone for the first two weeks. All of our lines came off of a Nortel PBX.”

Now, however, Bernstein says that the number of students that opt for PBX dial tones has dropped to the 300 to 500 range, often simply because their parents want phone access to their children. Other than in the example of hotels that McGill has purchased and that are used in the summer for conferences and non-student housing, the University is not adding any new residence lines.

“Any new residence that we build will not have voice,” says Bernstein. “There is no future for landlines in residence, because the majority of students rely completely on their cellphones.”

The U of T is facing a similar reality, but though it has the largest student body in Canada, it has a relatively small residence population to support.

“We support about 2,300 students,” says Stewart. “The majority of our students aren’t living on campus, and at present we don’t have any plans to change requirements for landlines.”

Video graduates

“From a video conference perspective, most of it is IP-based – we only have a few tiny installations that are still running ISDN,” says Paul Ruppert, the U of T’s Director, Integrated Client Services.

At the U of T video is managed by individual faculties.

“The Faculty of Medicine and OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) are the two main areas for video conferencing, but there are end points all over campus,” says Ruppert.

OISE uses Polycom’s technology, and the Faculty of Medicine is more reliant on Tandberg, the Norwegian video-conferencing company that was recently acquired by San Jose, CA-headquartered Cisco Systems. Given that individual faculties are in charge of their own purchasing, the standards question hasn’t gone away.

“Standards has been an ongoing process with regard to video conferencing,” says Ruppert. “There are a number of different standards for radio and video compression.”

According to Bernstein from McGill, the uncertainty around standards is affecting adoption.

“There are a lot of universities sitting on the sidelines, waiting on the standards to be published,” he says. “My understanding is that Cisco is participating at an honest level to bring some standardization to HD video.”

In the past the industry has been divided, with Avaya teaming up with Polycom, Cisco going solo and then buying Tandberg, Microsoft rolling out Live Meeting, and Skype, Google, and others offering free SIP-based video.

“SIP is a standard,” says Bernstein, “but following a standard won’t necessarily give you the functionality that you’ll get from Cisco, Avaya, or Windows Live Meeting, which is a fine product.”

McGill has a number of video applications to support a range of use cases, including: two Polycom rooms for interviews with academic staff and theses defences; Adobe Acrobat Connect, a desktop video solution the professors can use with students for one-on-one or group discussions; another fully-automated system in two large rooms connecting its downtown and West Island agricultural campuses; and a business-oriented scenario that uses OCS and Windows Live Meeting.

“There is not a PBX out there that can offer the functionality and the multi-media add-ons that you get with OCS,” says Bernstein.

McGill is considering technology form Cisco and Avaya, too, but Bernstein has to take into account whether he is trying to interface with the Microsoft platform, and if a Unified Communications solution will integrate back into Active Directory. And as discussions move to IP and video, the role of old PBXs can come into question.

“We have done some preliminary research into integrating video conferencing,” says Exner from the U of R. “We don’t know how it will interact with traditional telephony, but video conferencing has become more visible on our campus in the past ten months. We use it for some administration processes, as well as distance learning.”

Exner has installed equipment from Sony and LifeSize, a privately-held company out of Austin, Texas, that was recently purchased by Swiss-headquartered Logitech International. LifeSize is being used by SRnet (Saskatchewan Research Network Inc) a not-for-profit that provides an ultra-fast broadband to research and education institutions across Saskatchewan, and BCNET, which builds high-performance networks for British Columbia's research and education institutes.

The arrival of HD has added another ripple to the compression requirements, complicating things just as overall video conferencing demand is picking up. Video, once a pie-in-the-sky technology, is here to stay.
“We saw it late in the summer with the H1N1 scare,” says Ruppert, “The University made a concerted effort for us to conduct our academic business in the event that students or faculty couldn’t attend in person.”

The U of T also has an initiative to make streaming lectures available to faculty and students, something that McGill also offers.

“At McGill we do automated classroom lecture recording,” says Bernstein. “Almost every fair-sized classroom has video and audio recording, with support for applications like PowerPoint, and it is all placed on our Intranet. Any credentialed student can watch a lecture within ten minutes after it is completed.”

Bernstein says that online access has met with “unbelievable acceptance from both professors and students.” User can rewind using a browser in case they have missed anything. It is also useful for live events – one of Mcgill’s most sought after lectures was a keynote given by Bill Clinton at a graduation ceremony. The event was streamed live, but then also made available as archived video.

“We also have a display management system (DMS) from Cisco,” adds Bernstein. “We can use this for a variety of purposes: the registrar’s office can display guides, or scroll for news and announcements, and we can send information to screens across campus in the case of an emergency situation.”

Tomorrow always comes

Universities have unique demands, but in many ways provide a laboratory of sorts for other organizations: they are often highly distributed and resource-constrained, yet must serve a user-base that is demanding and in a constant state of flux. When a university embraces change, it has to do so with an eye to long-term flexibility and viability. In effect, the platform has to support innovation for years to come. Almost certainly, that means it will be IP-based.

“On the telecom side we are contractually obligated until 2013,” says Stewart from the U of T. “That doesn’t mean we are sitting and waiting for things to happen. “

Stewart adds that a move to VoIP would be a “huge technology shift”, but that the University has a user-base of faculty that are well positioned to try out new technologies.

“I am excited about bringing Unified Communications (UC) to the institution,” she says. “It will allow people to better manage information, to have it coming to them in as few places as possible.”

Though Bernstein notes there are still a number of scenarios where McGill needs a ‘real’ PBX, his experience with UC has been generally positive, which argues for an expanded role.

“We are using enterprise Instant Messaging (IM), and it has gained fabulous acceptance,” says Bernstein. “We have development offices across North America – in Los Angeles, Chicago, Montreal – and they all use it. Our customer service desk uses it and loves it. Whenever people are working in teams they adopt it well.”

Bernstein checks his very real enthusiasm by saying that he is not yet ready to stake his reputation on an enterprise-wide roll out of OCS or other UC technologies. One thing is clear, however – the value is widely acknowledged, and the demand is there.

To collaborate, it has to be IP-based

“In the areas of collaboration and access to data, wherever there are teams, we are certainly seeing demand for supporting technologies among the people we work with,” says Ruppert from the U of T. “We are seeing a changing paradigm of how people work together, and how they work with collaboration tools – whether they are down the hall, across campus, across the country, or around the world, they want real-time document collaboration.”

Exner has had some modest outages with his VoIP system that have affected the campus data network. It is more common than he would have experiences with a traditional TDM, but nothing that has materially impacted business. As a result, UC is a viable option.

“We are doing some research into Unified Communication,” says Exner. “Our needs there are pretty well grounded. Primarily, we are interested in having different interfaces to access video communication.”
Exner notes that as the price of technology declines the challenge often becomes for people to ‘unlearn’ old processes, but fortunately interfaces are becoming more user-friendly.

“The interaction between the end user and technology is evolving in a generally positive way. The vast majority of people have a good experience with IT interfaces throughout their lives, though I wouldn’t call them ‘intuitive’.”

At the end of the day, these changes, if implemented properly, will serve students, faculty, and administration to improve education overall.

“There is a ton of stuff that is happening with telecommunications and universities,” says Bernstein. “When I compare the stuff today with then I was a student – all the gear to manage education better and eliminate red tape for students and staff – I marvel at it and love being part of it.”