Army bulger at the Australian War Memorial. Photo by Steve Burton.
VoIP rollout
The AWM implemented a voice over IP (VoIP) system in December 2011. AWM information technology head Daryl Winterbottom said that the roll out was necessary in order to overcome the risks associated with 13-year-old analogue PABX system.
“We were facing lack of support due to the system reaching end of life and failure could have meant that we were completely without voice communications,” he said.
“The number one benefit was overcoming that risk. Moving to a VoIP solution also bought with it other advantages including the administration of the phone solution.”
After going to a competitive tender, the AWM selected an Avaya VoIP system. It was already running the vendor's data networking products so it's IT staff were familiar with the admin tools.
“This helped with the implementation although that was by no means a pre-requisite in our selection of the VoIP solution,” Winterbottom said.
Around 300 AWM staff use the VoIP system and staff members have reported “excellent” voice quality, said Winterbottom.
“We also integrated people’s voice messages with the [Microsoft] Outlook email system so if a staff member receives a voice message, it is available on the phone and transferred into their inbox and they are able to play that message however they choose to access it.”
Although not implemented at this stage, there is the potential to hand a call off to a mobile phone connected to the AWM wireless network, eliminating the toll cost for the call.
The AWM IT department is also upgrading from Microsoft SharePoint 2007 environment to Microsoft SharePoint 2010.
“This will better address the electronic records keeping requirements that have been put forward by National Archives Australia,” Winterbottom said.
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