ZOOM Phone to Modernize Telephony System

UITS began Phase Two of the Zoom Phone Project this year, continuing the University-wide migration from its current aging telephone infrastructure to Zoom Phone.

The complex choreography of the migration involved strong partnerships and collaboration between the Zoom Phone team and departmental business managers. For the transition to be successful, business managers collected all the phone data within their departments number by number. They researched if the number should be moved to Zoom, be disconnected, or if additional equipment was needed such as a headset or desktop phone.

Special lines and unique telephony needs were coordinated with the UITS telecommunications project managers to ensure that everything would translate over to the new system properly.

UITS fielded a collaborative project team to share the responsibilities, including a switch team to configure Zoom, the Network Operations team to configure the VLAN’s in the buildings, the business analyst team, telecommunications team, and customer service team — all dedicated to providing a smooth end-user experience during the implementation.

Over the next 18 months, all 17,983 University employee phone numbers will be transitioned to this new system. This will offer all employees a consolidated set of modern, efficient, and robust communications tools within the already familiar Zoom application.

Network Refresh Continues

In early 2022, 34 campus buildings were identified as having network equipment that was outdated and needing to be refreshed to current standards. Of these buildings, 6% had equipment older than 11 years. The University’s technology use has grown beyond the capacity of network equipment purchased in an era that was pre-iPhone. Over $6M in upgrades, were targeted to the top 10 teaching and top 10 research intensive buildings, and various high-use administrative buildings.

Over 10.4K obsolete wired network equipment were also identified for replacement that will be completed in FY23 due to supply chain issues.