IN WHAT COULD be one of the largest deployments of a Web service, UC Berkeley will revamp and unify its various voice and data communications networks as a single Web service.

   ADVERTISEMENT
  

Free IT resource

TechNet: More ways to know it, share it, and keep it running.

Sponsored by Microsoft

Free IT resource

Attend the SOA Executive Forum: Breaking SOA Bottlenecks SOAExecForum.com/may2007

Sponsored by InfoWorld

RELATED LINKS
»  AT&T buys high-speed wireless spectrum for $2.5 billion
»  Google, IBM promote 'cloud' computing at universities
»  IT trainer offers master's degree for hackers
»  Networking RSS feed 

IDG ENTERPRISE NETWORK
• More Network LAN/WAN News...  (ComputerWorld)
• Lucid8 adds data protection to software lineup for Exchange  (ComputerWorld)

TOP NEWS 


IT SOLUTION SEARCH
On the front end, users will be able to access either by dialing a single number or using an IP address from any device to receive their e-mails, voice mail, faxes, calendaring and scheduling information. The system will also will give callers the ability to get personal data out of back-end systems such as accessing medical or enrollment information, as well as class availability.

All of these systems exist today on the university campus, but as distinct silos of information. Web services will make it possible to connect the existing networks into a single provisioning platform for both IT and users, according to Terri Kouba, UC Berkeley systems developer.

"Web services allow us to take the voice mail message or e-mail message and package it up as a neutral object," said Korba. "It's like using UPS; they don't care what is inside the box. That is what Web services will allow us to do - [move] a neutral object from the sender to the receiver."

On the back end, Web services protocols will create the link between the application and the repository by sending SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) requests, according to Kayvan Alikhani, CTO at MagnetPoint, the company selected by Berkeley to integrate the systems. MagnetPoint, based in San Francisco, is a Web services company that specializes in communications.

The development process is accelerated and Web services make it easier to write distributed applications because they are communicating over an IP protocol, according to Alikhani.

"Programmers writing an application that requires information access or delivery processes can relieve themselves from having to know the various protocols and standards. Instead they deal with Web services, which only require them to know XML," said Alikhani.

Alikhani calls the MagnetPoint model a "mid-source" solution as opposed to an outsourced or internally deployed solution.

The mid-source model allows the enterprise data to remain inside the firewall, but to access the data a user goes through the MagnetPoint messaging server on the outside.

"MagnetPoint has some cool routing. It allows you, for example, to set up times when you are or are not going to be available and to manage the types of communications, voice, fax, e-mail you want to receive and where you will receive them during designated hours," said Kouba.

Berkeley will go into a technical pilot program this quarter. If things work as advertised, a UC Berkeley skin will be put on it, said Kouba.

Following that, the communications and network services department for which Kouba works will do an extensive customer pilot to see what functionality users want, such as call screening and single number reach.

Kouba did not say when the unified messaging project will be completed but estimated it was likely to be deployed before the end of the year.