ISIT302

Corporate Network Management

Group F
Final Group Report and Portfolio

Members:
WaiHin Lee 4898850
Phut Wae Jyn 5615549

Nicholas yeap yeong wei 5702677

Tee Khang Yee 5287293

Table of Contents

1. Executive summary........................................................................................................................................ 3
1.1 Summary of Options .................................................................................................................................... 3
2.1 Policy/ Entity Context .................................................................................................................................. 3
2.2 Current Technical Environment ................................................................................................................... 3
2.3 Business Problem ......................................................................................................................................... 3
2.4 Stakeholder Impact ...................................................................................................................................... 4
2.5 Current Risks ............................................................................................................................................... 4
3.1. Strategic Alignment .................................................................................................................................. 5
3.2. Technical Environment ............................................................................................................................. 5
3.3 Business Environment ................................................................................................................................. 5
3.4. Benefits ..................................................................................................................................................... 6
Proposal Summary ......................................................................................................................................... 6
Solution Options ............................................................................................................................................ 6
5.1 Design Criteria ............................................................................................................................................. 7
5.2 Identified Options ........................................................................................................................................ 7
5.3 Options Analysis .......................................................................................................................................... 7
6. Option Details ................................................................................................................................................ 9
7. References .................................................................................................................................................... 11
1. Executive summary

This is a report that our group provide few options that help AIG to solve the problem that they faced in the
monitoring platform, and the skillsets that are needed by the employees was many. The problem that the
organization faced was there are too many different monitoring platforms. When there is problem happened,
the organization will need to go one by one to check where is the problem come from.
We suggest AIG by outsourcing the software, maintenance, technical support and monitoring issue to a
third-party company. By outsourcing these to the third-party, AIG doesn’t need to have too many employees
to do the monitoring platform troubleshooting and the skillsets that the employees that needed will be more
less.

1.1 Summary of Options

The first option that we provide for the AIG was remain default. This means that there is nothing will need
to change for the organization. For another option, will be outsourcing to third-party company to develop a
software that can do multiple monitoring in one platform. This will help the organization to get an easier
monitoring environment, so that that the employees of the organization can do the monitoring more easy.

2.1 Policy/ Entity Context

AIG is an organization was found in 1919 by Cornelius Vander Starr at Shanghai, China. This is a global
organization that offers insurance claim expertise and excellent financial strength in an extension range of
product and services. The range of products and services that this organization cover include car, property,
travel, health and identity theft.

2.2 Current Technical Environment

AIG have 8 enterprises Unified Communication host in the worldwide. In this organization they have 75,000
voice port that are supported, to make sure that there will not have problem at communication in the
organization and with customers. AIG also have 5,000 call center users to make sure that the organization
will always provide immediate support to the customer when they need help. The peak time of inbound
contact centre calls worldwide that the organization will receive per month is about 3,500,000.

2.3 Business Problem

The current availability and SLA of AIG is near to perfect to back their business. However, the 0.003%
downtime are still a risk and it affects the business as well as the losses of AIG. Even though AIG have the
proper tools to monitor the downtime parameter of voice and unified communication, they are only using a
standalone tool to monitor each application separately. Therefore, this results in an ineffective and time-
consuming way to achieve their wanted results. For example, if multiple applications are having downtime
issue, AIG must view the issues through the monitoring platform one by one, by the time they found the
issues, the signal might have already turn into red and services that are provided to clients are already
affected.
As for the financial management for IT services, a higher cost is probably required as well as more time is
needed to maintain each of the monitoring platform. This is because there are more than 20 applications are
ongoing and AIG are obligated to implement integrated monitoring platform to view statistics of multiple
applications.
Moving on to service transition, the monitoring platforms requires each operating employee to have specific
skillsets. As a result, this is also another time-consuming action as employee are needed to go through
training in order to know how to operate and monitor on each different platform.
Last but not least, it is crucial that AIG oversee their change management on where they should improve
from a standalone monitoring platform to an interconnected monitoring platform. Their current monitoring
platform is no longer feasible in years to come as technologies are constantly upgrading every day. Thus,
without changing their platform it will definitely affect the businesses and losses of AIG be it small or big.

2.4 Stakeholder Impact

Stakeholders which are affected to various degrees includes; end consumers, internal AIG network users,
AIG network engineers, and workers in various types of sites (small office, factory, data centre).
These impacts contribute to a failure to complete business operation for majority of the affected
stakeholders. If a monitoring centre loses VoIP communication to the rest of the network or even the outside
public network, that entire division of the business loses the meaning of completing operations.

2.5 Current Risks

Large offices, are known to be extremely critical in case of a problem arises. If the monitoring centre loses
connection to the rest of the network this can have a large impact on how AIG communicates with their
customers. This troubled communication can produce both short-term and long-term effects. With
availability issues present, these offices would still see ill the ill effects of downtime.
With service disruptions, communication to customers could be severely disrupted and lead to a loss of
business and a decline in customer satisfaction. If customers are not satisfied with the communication to
Dell, this could impact how and where they spend their money
3.1. Strategic Alignment

AIG has not invested in its technology infrastructure for many years after financial crisis of 2008. Half of
AIG’s remote clients join meeting through punching in a 10-digit codes and manually dialing a phone call,
said by Mirril McMullen, AIG’s collaboration product manager. He points out that a real time calling
technology is significant in nowadays. He is able to implement with newer calling technologies such as
users can click on a URL and link to a video chat. They were focusing on how could wrapped up in
innovative vision and the communication that might be headed while assessing unified communication.

In March 2017, Gareiss and McMullen explore UC users’ successes and setbacks, especially talk with cloud,
team cooperation and vendor consolidation. They point out that they need to improve the user interface and
user experience, integrate vendor, and that would be a strategic objective in 2018 that could get to a solution
which bringing all things together.

In addition, McMullen said he will focus on video services and contact center and hopes to provide both
clients and users with some innovative communications with maybe even a smidge of artificial intelligence
in 2018.

3.2. Technical Environment

To design the unified communication monitoring, AIG has design to separate into different components.
Central Intelligence Platform use enterprise intelligence platform to send email notify. Then all message will
send to different UC foundation components. Some of them using SOAP/AXL, SFTP, SNMP, to connect
with Cisco CUCM 7.x, 8.x, 9.x; Some of them using SNMP, HTTPS to collect with POLYCOM and
TANDBERG; Some of them using SAT, RTCP, SNMP, CDR to collect between Multiple Avaya
Communication Managers and Gateways, Avaya Modular Messaging, Avaya CMS, Avaya AES, AEP and
System and Session Manager; Some of them using Lync FE Pool, Lync Edge, Lync Mediation, Lync Back-
end, Lync Monitoring. The UCD-M/Manager can collect with UC foundation and the can collect with
NOC/Users.

Basic on our solution that we provided, servers and routers are required in the UC monitoring framework. In
order to separate monitoring system which will not affect the efficiency and performance with the entire
system, we decide to buy a new server which used to monitoring. In addition, increasing the quantity of
routers is also necessary which allows system detect error more quickly and effectively.

3.3 Business Environment

The future business goals for the organization is to provide a better service for customers. With a better
service, it will increase the satisfaction of the customers and this will also help the organization to have a
growth of new customer group. By reducing the time that needs to solve when there was a downtime will
help the organization to reach this business goals. This is because, when the customer has an issue but they
cannot contact the customer service, this will hardly damage the image of the organization.

3.4. Benefits

Proposal Summary

For the proposal that we have designed, we find that our recommendation could help AIG company
increasing flexible time focusing on their own business. According to McMullen (2017), AIG will focus on
video services and contact center, which is their core business. Outsourcing is a great way to pass the things
to a professional company, which could increase efficiency and reduce time and cost.
The networking also been the key issue that needed to be fixed. From our option, we are going to reduce
downtime which helps to increasing user experiences, especially in the peak time.

Solution Options

Base on the first option, we could save cost, and human resource to develop any new planning. Just maintain
the same situation, even there would be lots of risks, AIG do not need to face the crisis not only because the
performance of new methods may not better than new vision, but also not creating new issue come.

In addition, the outsourcing to professional enterprise which could achieve “win-win”. AIG and Microsolve
Corp. just focus on their own business and provide greater performance in the overall monitoring platform.
The failure detection use to reduce downtime, which can provides better user experience to user, and it is
one of the important strategy in 2018.
5.1 Design Criteria

Software development & technical support will be the one of the design criteria for one of the option we are
looking for. By the information that have been provide by AIG, we know that there are many monitoring
tools for different monitoring platform and this required the organization will need to hire numbers of
employees that have skillset for each platform. It will be a great option by having a platform that can do
multiple monitoring, so that the organization will only need fewer numbers of employee to have less skillset
to do the job.

5.2 Identified Options

One of the option that we suggest is outsourcing to third party to develop a new platform that can do
multiple monitoring. For this suggestion, the AIG would only outsource applications, maintenance, technical
support and monitoring problem issue. But all the things which involved in customer privacy such as
payment statement, log statement etc will be kept by AIG company. This option will be helpful for AIG,
with outsourcing, the organization will not have worry when there is problem happened, the organization
will just only make a phone call to the third-party company, and they will start doing troubleshooting in a
short period of time.

5.3 Options Analysis

Option: Outsourcing
- Service Strategy
To provides a professional feedback and real time support to our customers, AIG could try to
outsource the monitoring system in order to focus on their core business, it may help AIG spend
more resources on their own core business and finally provide better user interface and user
experience to all the users.

- Service Design
To outsourcing the monitoring system to Microsolve Corp., AIG has a list of requirements that the
monitoring platform should have or should do. For example, risk management, security issue,
customers security etc, are including in the planning and AIG need to spend time to discuss with
Microsolve Corp.

- Service Transition
When the platform come out, Microsolve Corp will set up a team which would be a AIG customers
support and technical team. They will focus on process all basic question and technical helps to
customers. In addition, they will provide maintenance to AIG company.

- Service Operation
To ensure the services are delivered within the agreed upon service levels. The problem
management, accident management and access management should be developed on the first and
now we could guide the services based on those management plan.
 - Continual Service Improvement
AIG will use different ways to track user’s behaviour such as most popular functionality, most
popular emoji etc. It could be identified from many ways such as data mining, observation,
questionnaire etc.

Option: BFD
- Service Strategy
To provide fast forwarding path failure detection time for routing which can help the stakeholder to
monitor or troubleshoot BFD. Additionally, due to that BFD support BGP and EIGRP which it will
make it easier for implementation to existing network protocol to the stakeholder, which is BGP that
they are currently using.

- Service Operation
BFD provides fast BFD peer failure detection times independently of all media types, encapsulations,
topologies, and routing protocols BGP, EIGRP, IS-IS, and OSPF. By sending rapid failure detection notices
to the routing protocols in the local router to initiate the routing table recalculation process, BFD contributes
to greatly reduced overall network convergence time.
6. Option Details
To concern with COST analysis, as the manager told us we have no budget limit, we assume AIG company
has enough financial capacity to support all of our solution as below:

OPTION 1: Remain Default

Description For this option the AIG doesn’t need to do any others changes for monitoring platform. This
is because that although the organization have known about there are some of the challenge
that had faced, but the organization have already come out with recovery list that will provide
support to solve the problem.
Stakeholder The problem that the organization is still there.
impact
Cost There was no any extra cost is needed for this option.
Benefits One of the benefits for this option if the organization choose to use, it will help the organization
to save the cost. This is because the organization will not need to spend extra amount for
outsourcing or developing a new platform and at the same time, the organization will also need
to provide training to the employees so that they know how to use it.

The second benefits will be time saving, this is because if the organization decided to
outsourcing or develop a new platform, it will be time consuming and the employee that needed
to been trained will also need to spend extra time to do learning.

Risk 1. The employee will have required multiple skillsets to monitor every platform
2. The cost to maintain every platform was quite high
3. The security control was not standardized
Schedule No schedule is needed for this option

OPTION 2: Outsourcing
Description Outsourcing would be a solution in order to develop an own monitoring platform by AIG.
Base on the issues that had faced, we recommend AIG could cooperate with Microsolve IT
Corp. Microsolve is an IT company which support outsourcing system monitoring and
network security. It’s totally highlight with the issues that AIG had faced, and a professional
company could be a great business partner that reduce resources AIG company need to spend.

AIG would outsource the application management, maintenance, technical support and
system monitoring to Microsolve Corp. BUT all things that involved of customer privacy data
such as payment, log statement etc will be kept by AIG company.

Stakeholder
impact Stakeholders Roles Influence (+) Impact / Interests (-) Impact /
Concern
Employees - Usage of - reduce - AIG employees are - Need to spend
network human able to spend time on time with
resources that other part of business cooperate with
- Follow up spend on strategy Microsolve team
with management
Microsolve and service - Flexible scheduling
Team for all of them
- More efficiency
 Executives - Running the - Better to - Increasing - Need to spend
company achieve other productivity higher cost for
business Microsolve Corp
- Integrate strategy - Reduce Time cost as there are lots
of functionalities
data set and
analyse data - Focussing - Reduce developing outsourcing to
them
on the own cost
business
technology

Cost - Fee of developing and integrating all current things within a platform.
- Fee form maintenance, web support (internal and external technical support), 24 hours
customers services
- Fee to buy equipment.
- Server
Benefits - Reduce Time cost and human resources cost
- Reduce cost
- Focus on Enterprise own business and get more advantage
- Increase of efficiency
Risk - High cost
- Customer’s privacy may need to concern
Schedule Before scheduling, that’s necessary to sign contract to protect customer data will not be
leaked out.

Task Task Name Start End Day to

Date Date Complete
(working
day)

1 Design an interface and reported by 1-Jun 11-Jun 7

Microsolve Corp.
2 Develop monitoring platform 11-Jun 10-Aug 45
3 Report first-draft for design 14-Aug 14-Aug 1
4 Alterative design and testing 15-Aug 29-Aug 10
5 Operation start working 3-Sept - -
6 Customer service team start working 3-Sept - -

OPTION 3: Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)

Description A detection protocol which use to provide fast forwarding path failure detection times for all
media types, encapsulation, topologies and routing protocols. BFD can provide consistent
failure detection method for network administrators. Network profiling and planning will be
easy with the use of BFD due to that it provides detect forwarding path failures at a uniform
rate, this also help in provide a consistent and predictable convergence time.
Stakeholder Stakeholders Roles Influence (+) Impact / (-) Impact /
impact Interests Concern
Employees - Usage of - Majority - Faster - Network
network users of the troubleshooting failure
- Generating network and error
revenue detection
- Improving of
network
performance
 Executives - Running the - Providing - Increasing - Network
company support to the productivity failure
company - Lower cost - Lack of
productivity
Cost Cisco 890 Series Router $2800 per router
Benefits - Helps in reduce the convergence downtime
- Provides fast forwarding path failure detection time for routing which can help the
stakeholder to monitor or troubleshoot BFD.
Risk - BFD can have high resource demands depending on network scale

Schedule Task Task Name Start End Day to

Date Date Complete

1 Acquisition of Router 2-Jun 6-Jun 4

2 Delivery Timeframe 7-Jun 21-Jun 14
3 Staff Training 22-Jun 5-Jul 14
4 Converting & Applying of System Design 6-Jul 13-Jul 7
to the network
5 Installation of software system 14-Jul 21-Jul 7
6 Testing & troubleshooting of software 22-Jul 20-Aug 30
7 Evaluation of network performance 21-Aug 28-Aug 7

7. References
Cisco (2007). Bidirectional Forwarding Detection. [online] Cisco. Available at:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios/12_0s/feature/guide/fs_bfd.html [Accessed 23 May 2018].

Luke O’Neill (2017). Unified communication users weigh vendor consolidation. [online]
Available at: https://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com/news/450415793/Unified-
communications-users-weigh-vendor-consolidation [Accessed 27 May 2018].

Mircosolve (2018). IT System Monitoring | Microsolve IT Outsourcing. Available at:

https://microsolve.com.au/it-services/it-outsourcing/system-monitoring [Accessed 27 May 2018].