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Project Ushers In New Era For Phones At Duke

Project on track to save $2.7 million annually

Moria Brass faced a dilemma last year after a major thunderstorm dumped several inches of rain and flooded Hanes House, displacing about 250 faculty and staff from several School of Medicine departments.

As associate dean for administration in the School of Medicine, Brass was responsible for disaster coordination and quickly began seeking temporary space where people could work.

"There wasn't a single space large enough to accommodate everyone, so we had to move people into whatever space was available on campus," she said.

Her task was made easier by the voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) telecommunications system. Unlike traditional telephones, the VoIP phones retain their numbers no matter where they are plugged into the network.

"The VoIP system made the move so much easier," Brass said. "People simply picked up their phones, plugged them in at their temporary desks, and they were good to go. The VoIP system adds an element of flexibility in a disaster situation that is simply fantastic."

That flexibility is one of the benefits of VoIP technology, which delivers phone service over the existing computer network, rather than a separate telephone network. The three-year project to transition Duke's phone system to VoIP -- a move that reduced phones rates for all departments and that will save Duke approximately $2.79 million per year -- was completed this week, when Duke University Executive Vice President Tallman Trask III presided over a ceremony to mark the removal of the last few hundred lines from telephone switching equipment that had been in place since the late 1980's.

"The idea of moving to VoIP at the outset of the recession helped set an example for how we can find new and better ways of providing services that also reduce costs," said Trask.

In February 2009, Tracy Futhey, Duke's chief information officer, announced plans to convert to VoIP service. "The VoIP conversion represents a milestone for us," Futhey said. "It reduces departments' current costs, sets us up for lower infrastructure costs for every construction project we undertake from this point forward, and allows us to take advantage of converged, digital communications in the future."

The savings were realized in large part from the abandonment of legacy telephone switches that are now costly and difficult to maintain and from the simplification of billing procedures for phone service.

"This project gave the Office of Information Technology and Financial Services the opportunity to rethink how departments pay for standard services like phones," said Tim Walsh, vice president for finance. "Overall, we operate far more efficiently and effectively if we allocate the overall cost of services like these across the entire organization and simplify billing for both the central service provider and the customer departments throughout Duke."

Duke's Division of Cellular Therapy was among the most recent areas to transition to the new VoIP phones. Kathy Tobin, business manager for the division, said her department is already seeing savings from the switch to VoIP, mostly from the elimination of charges for calls outside our immediate area. Many calls in Tobin's department were local long distance, to places like Raleigh, which used to be tracked individually, billed on paper and charged back to the department. Now, paper billing has been eliminated, and departments pay a flat rate for each line for the entire year-typically half the cost of the old rates when long-distance service is included.

Tobin said that the support provided through the Office of Information Technology made the transition to VoIP go smoothly.

"We operate seven days a week, dealing with immune-compromised patients, and we need our phones all the time," Tobin said. "The VoIP conversion team went to enormous trouble to understand our needs, to individualize their approach to meeting those needs, and to ensure that the switch from one system to the other was as unobtrusive as possible."

Tobin said the OIT team went out of its way to explain how the conversion would take place and to allay any fears from staff that they would be without phone service-even left phones from both old and new systems on the desks side by side until the staff felt comfortable relying on the VoIP system.

"They answered our questions immediately, and they were quick to offer suggestions to address any problems we encountered," she said.

The transition also brought additional savings as each department got the opportunity to review its phone use and eliminate unnecessary lines. On average, Duke departments reduced the number of lines by 7 percent.

Installation of the new system throughout the university and health system required active partnership between OIT and Duke Health Technology Solutions (DHTS), since the entire computer network had to be prepared to carry the additional data representing voice traffic. Bob Johnson, who is in charge of communications infrastructure for OIT, said that the collaboration between university and health system IT staffs has also created a new foundation for future savings.

"The hospital system is in the midst of constructing major new facilities," he said. "Because our phone system runs on the computer network, as opposed to the old 'twisted-pair' wiring that phones used to rely on, new buildings can be wired for VoIP only. The new technology will save an estimated $425,000 during construction of the Duke Cancer Center alone."

Johnson said users can also expect new services in the future based on the VoIP system. 

"Faculty and staff will be able to take advantage of 'presence' services, which will route calls to individuals when they are available and to their voice mail when they are not, and 'unified communication' services that allow individuals to click on a phone number on their computer to call someone on their phone or send a voicemail messages to their email inbox."