>> -- office
of telecommunications services transition service delivery
division, and welcome.
Welcome to our fourth full service workshop,
Transition Planning for GSA-managed VoIP customers.
As I said, this is our fourth full service workshop.
A couple administrative items,
if everyone could please mute your phones.
For now everyone is on our end unmuted.
If we get to a point where there's a lot
of background noise, we will mute everybody.
But right now everybody is unmuted
so you can ask questions.
Also, we ask for any questions to be put into the question
and answer pod on the Adobe Connect screen that's in front
of you, and we'll try to answer them as soon as possible
or get back to you all.
The slides for this workshop will be provided via email
after this presentation, and also we are recording
on this briefing, and the recording,
just like the other three, will be posted on the Interact site.
We have about two hours or so.
We'll see how long we go.
We'll try to keep it to two hours, but if we get done
with it earlier we will, you know, we'll do so.
So let me first off say the purpose
of these full service workshops are to share, educate, inform,
have a forum to ask questions for anything, you know,
related to the full service, any topics or issues.
And as a reminder, you know, the full service program
within GSA is the legacy regional telecom program in GSA
in regions one through ten that have been
and that now our program is centralized.
With the full service program, you know,
primarily provided local telecommunications.
That was the bread and butter and the heart
and soul of the program.
Today's topic, however, and we're going to talk about voice
over IP and GSA managed locations where we provide VoIP.
Okay. Today's workshop will focus on EIS planning
for managed VoIP customers.
The full service program currently provides approximately
600 and, I'm sorry, 6800 subscribers on VoIP,
not a real lot compared to the TDM that's out there.
Upon completion of the workshop,
hopefully participants will become familiar
with VoIP solutions available under EIS, gain knowledge
of agency transition inventories for managed VoIP,
and understand how in selected cases
where customer premise equipment can be reused
for EIS fair opportunities
and source selection for VoIP solutions.
Okay. Here's a list of some of the people,
the subject matter experts
that may be speaking during this workshop.
Primarily, it'll be myself, and Karl Muego,
and Gerry Brosnan providing the information.
So, again, I'm just reminding everybody
to put your questions in the Q and A pod.
Okay. So let's turn our attention
to the workshop agenda.
I'll start off and provide some preliminary or brief overview
of VoIP solutions under EIS with an emphasis
on the service coverage areas and pricing for hosted VoIP.
Then Karl Muego, he'll present a more detailed type of overview
of VoIP solutions available under EIS, and then,
and Gerry Brosnan will follow up and present a brief review
of the GSA voice over IP locations that we have
and provide agencies with a site-by-site tally of seats
that will be required to transition to EIS.
Gerry will also talk at the end as well, how CPE can be reused,
thereby where existing voice over IP CPE that we have
in place now can be reused in transition to EIS.
And then after that we will wrap up the workshop.
So, okay, so this slide, before we consider any detailed
or technical aspects of EIS, I just wanted to give a, you know,
a little basic EIS contract terms and conditions.
All the offerors had to bid four mandatory services
including voice.
All offerors had to offer the four mandatory services
in at least 25 core-based statistical areas, or what we,
everybody, what we know as CBSAs.
Now to satisfy the mandatory voice requirements,
the offerors could either bid IP voice or IPVS or switch,
or circuit switch voice service, or both.
Circuit switch voice service is basically legacy TDM,
if you want to think about it that way, more what we're using,
under EIS uses the term CSVS.
So, in the next few slides I'll consider only hosted voice
over IP.
This is functionally equivalent for like-for-like voice services
for our customers using today.
We do have a lot of coverage for voice over IP.
So as you can see in this chart,
all ten vendors provide a hosted voice over IP solution.
And four of the vendors pretty much cover every CBSA that's
out there.
There are 929 CBSAs, and most of them, as you can see,
are covered by at least four of the vendors.
And I would suspect over time,
because GSA is getting modifications in,
that CBSA coverage will expand.
GSA, we operate in 802 of the CBSAs.
So I'm pretty confident in that for any
of the full service customers that are out there,
you will have, there will be adequate competition
availability for voice over IP.
Okay, so there's a couple CLINs on EIS that make up VoIP.
So for comparative pricing purposes, you know,
I'm focusing primarily just on hosted or cloud-based IP.
Karl will get into some of the other options
of providing voice over IP.
So, as you can see on this slide,
when you're ordering VoIP, there is primarily two CLINs
that are ordered, and the CLINs are listed on the screen there.
So you have a seat component,
and you also have a managed LAN component.
And the seat component, as you can see,
comes with unlimited local long distance and 23 features.
They're all listed here,
but they're all your traditional telephony features.
Okay, so just real quick some pricing that's available today
out on the public pricer that we were able to extract for VoIP.
So on the slides, you can see where we have an average minimum
and maximum per seat for VoIP, for locations
that have 10, 50, or 100 users.
And the pricing that you see there is composed
of the two previous CLINs that I had on the previous page.
You'll see this pricing is pricing that had been competed,
so if you do a fair opportunity, you know, for voice over IP,
you know, you'll go to another competition,
so we may even see better pricing than this based upon,
you know, the locations and the volume that you have.
Okay. And then my last slide, again, for pricing purposes,
you see the ten vendors there that are providing voice
over IP, and, you know, the range is all within $15
or so per seat for 10, 50, and 100 users.
So, you know, voice over IP under EIS is very attractive,
especially as we attempt to modernize and get
out of the legacy TDM business.
If you're not going to have a fully converged network and go
with a hosted VoIP, a separate voice network, the pricing is,
you know, pretty attractive.
I will note this does not cover the set
and does not cover any wiring that may have to be done.
But this just gives you an idea of what you can expect,
you know, if you're looking to replace, you know, analog lines
or POTS lines with a hosted VoIP solution.
So, with that, let me turn it over to Karl Muego, and he'll go
through the options of VoIP on EIS.
>> Hi Ray, thank you.
Gerry, if you could un-share please,
so I can share my slides.
All right.
I think we're set.
So hi, good afternoon.
I'm Karl. I currently lead solutions engineering team
in solutions development
where we are the technical consultants.
My team, we are also the ones that will do the technical
and pricing portions of the scope review
when you submit your solicitations.
I'm a retired telecommunications officer from the Army,
and I've been with GSA for eight years.
I started out in region three network services in Philadelphia
where I was the project manager for a bunch of voice
over IP projects for different agencies.
We installed a little, a few small systems for about 30,
50 users, for small offices, enterprise level systems
for a campus environment where they can even act
as a service provider for their remote locations.
I was also the acquisition phase project manager
for the region three, regions one, two, and three VoIP project
that a lot of folks are using today.
So since my time of joining GSA, I've been doing a lot of VoIP,
and that's probably the reason why I got drafted
for this talk today.
So in this segment of the workshop, I'll be focusing
on EIS voice services and unified communication services.
So here's the agenda for this segment.
I'll start by going over the challenges and the forces
to modernize, something that is very relevant to all of us.
I'll briefly talk about the EIS contract,
focusing on voice services and unified communication services.
Then I'm going to cover the requirements of development
from big rocks to the medium-sized rocks
and to the more detailed information.
Then I'm going to show some use cases
where I will show the actual CLINs
and pricing information for three use cases.
The challenge, so we have a big challenge in front of us.
Our contracts are expiring, and we have to modernize.
So this particular slide, I saw a version of it about three,
four months ago when I attended a workshop, and I told my team
when I came back, we have to come up with our version
of this slide because it's a great way
to show how our activities fit into the bigger picture,
specifically for infrastructure services, for telecom services.
We're focused on the infrastructure priorities,
and I specifically highlighted two items that's very relevant
to us.
The majority of us, if not all, have some type of pressure
to move to the cloud and retire legacy services.
And then when you have a chance actually if you could read,
you know, like the challenges, business outcomes,
application priorities, and skills and gaps.
It will be a good way to actually see how you, you know,
how you can custom fit this particular slide
for your organization.
So this one I borrowed from the NS2025 strategy briefing.
If I can direct your attention to the red box.
Essentially this is your modernization plan
for VoIP services.
If you have legacy services, eventually you have
to implement voice over IP or some type
of unified communications, so that UCaaS, or we call U-CASS,
is a type of unified communications deployed
in the cloud, and it's using the very hip term,
it seems like everybody's using that as a service nomenclature.
So when you do have time, read the finer points of this slide,
because it does explain a lot of the legacy technologies
that are being phased out and what's being used now
and the emerging technologies.
So these are the compelling reasons why we have
to modernize.
I'll give you a few moments to absorb the slide.
If you need to build a business case,
this slide will provide you with enough justifications
for your business case.
There's also the executive order, EO-13800,
which led to the IT modernization report.
There's a new law, the MGT Act,
possibly funding modernization efforts,
so it's so new right now, the MGT Act established a fund
for agencies that they can possibly tap into.
You have to request and then you get the funding.
You have to reimburse it.
As I mentioned, you know, like this is so new,
the details are still being worked out,
the technology modernization board, I saw it today,
they recently met, so we should be getting a whole lot
of guidance from that.
Before I proceed to the EIS specifics,
are there any questions to what I mentioned previously?
I'm showing my slide, so I'm not seeing the chat box.
So if somebody could chime in if questions are being asked
that I need to address.
>> Hey Karl, this is Scott.
On this end, we did have that question come in,
would there be pauses for question and answer,
and the answer to that is yes, throughout the presentation Karl
or Gerry will pause at times to open
up the floor to have a dialogue.
So we'll get, we'll work through a few slides, we'll pause,
we'll work through a few slides.
So if you could kind of collect your questions and see
if maybe they're answered.
If they don't, then you'll have that opportunity
on the bridge once we open the bridge back
up for people to have that verbal.
Thanks.
>> Excellent.
>> Could we have that opportunity
for the previous set of slides?
>> Absolutely.
>> You presented a slide that showed the number of CBSAs
that had been awarded to various vendors.
I submitted a question.
It looks like that's the CBSAs that were awarded initially,
and my question is, have there been any changes to that
or have any vendors submitted contract mods that are hoping
to add IPVS but are still being evaluated at this point?
>> Peggy, oh, ok, Caroline.
>> Caroline.
>> Pardon me.
What was presented was indeed the number of CBSAs for IPVS
as awarded in July, but you're absolutely right,
there's been a series of contract mods submitted to GSA,
and some have been processed, but that's an ongoing effort.
But just to reiterate, that was July's numbers
and those are available on GSA Interact.
That's continuously updated, the CBSA coverage,
but that's the most publicly available figures presently.
But be assured that there's mods coming.
>> And I'll say there is, I mean they're here, there are mods
in the house already that are being processed.
I can't necessarily speak if they're for this VoIP,
but there are mods coming in.
And as they get award--
>> I can also--
>> And as they get awarded, you know,
they're made available to the public.
>> Yeah, I can also chime on that, Ray,
because I do spend a whole lot of time
with an EIS agency pricer and public pricer.
So if you go to the public, even to the public pricer,
all of the mods, you can access what mods are being
or were approved, and that's continuously updated, you know,
like what vendors are awarded,
so all that information is there.
It's very easy to go to the EIS agency pricer
or a public pricer.
For the public pricer, it's actually even easier.
If you just remember, EIS public pricer.
Google it.
It'll give you that top link.
You connect to that link, and just explore that site,
because it's very easy to use,
and you'll get updated information,
if you haven't been there yet.
>> Okay, I appreciate that.
Obviously that will only show mods that have been awarded.
Is there any way to get any insight as to, you know,
so many vendors have submitted mods that are in evaluation
to add CBSAs for these services?
>> Probably best to actually take that question,
and we can ask it to the folks running the contract.
I'm on the solutions development side of it, so I can't answer.
Ray, anybody else who can help out on that one?
>> So we'll get with our acquisition folks
and get you an answer.
>> Okay. Because you can understand how
that might affect strategic decisions we're looking at.
>> I understand.
>> Okay, thank you.
>> The big question is what's the impact
of the merger/acquisition between CenturyLink and Level 3
since they were both separate awardees?
So that's another acquisition-sensitive question
that I don't think I can answer, but, so you're right.
CenturyLink bought Level 3,
and I presume it will have some impact on this contract.
Specifically at this point I don't know.
It's probably being discussed
within GSA acquisition and legal now.
>> Okay. I take it no more additional questions
about the previous slides?
So here's a one-pager on the EIS contract,
high ceiling, $50 billion.
Long period of performance, 15 years.
And lots of competition, 10 awardees,
a lot more than Networx anyway.
I do want to mention the federal IT modernization report
to the president mentioned EIS over 60 times to help
in the modernization efforts, so this is the vehicle
that will modernize our government network.
This is almost a repeat of what Ray mentioned earlier,
the items in red are the mandatory services.
Today, I'll be speaking directly about the voice services,
specifically that voice service in red.
And under managed services, the third item there,
unified communication service, so that falls
under managed services.
That's why I put that yellow arrow in managed services.
So we pulled this out of the pricer, from the public pricer.
As you can see, for CSVS, there are five EIS contractors.
So it might be a little tough to read, but those are CenturyLink,
Granite, Level 3, Met Tel and Verizon.
For IPVS, all the contractors provided that service,
and for unified communication service,
there are six contractors.
We med with an additional contractor not too long ago,
and they mentioned that they will be adding UCS.
So, I believe that was Granite that we were speaking to.
So, again, you know, like the pricer is up to date,
so if you do have questions, you can go to the pricer
and get the latest information of what's been awarded.
So another plug for the pricer,
this is a pretty good graphical representation, you know,
like I just looked at for IP voice services,
where it's available, you can drill down to
which particular vendor and you can zoom in and out to see
if the services are available in your particular location.
So, it's really a great tool.
I would say, you know,
like a lot of lessons learned were picked
up from the Networx pricers, and this is using new technology
of web design and how it flows, so it's really a great tool
that everybody should access.
So this is the graphical representation
that I was mentioning where you can zoom in and out,
and then you can pick what vendor or what type of service
to see where it's available.
All right, so what will meet your requirements?
Throughout this talk I will be using the word,
or the acronym, IPVS and UCS.
So IPVS, you know, that's VoIP, and UCS,
that's unified communications.
So that's a nice little picture.
Somebody's typing.
If you could mute your phone please.
>> This is Steve Holder at USGS.
I brought this up in other GSA presentations,
the word call manager is used by one vendor
as what they call their systems, so I would, you know,
really prefer it if you guys used something a little generic
because you're actually sliding, and in my mind,
this could be construed
as you're supporting one vendor solution over another,
because call manager is what Cisco calls their PBX.
>> So, yes, noted.
>> Any other comments?
Okay, so you can see IPVS, those are the services provided
on the left, and in comparison, UCS.
The deployment models are underneath it, you know,
either hosted or premises,
and then with UCS it's either hosted, managed, or a hybrid.
So this information here, again, you know, like talking
about the public pricer, there are service guides there
for every single service that EIS provides.
This information, I got it directly
from the actual service guide for IPVS.
So with IPVS, you can have it hosted.
The communications provider,
hosted by the communications provider under a facility
or premise-based within the agency's facility.
Managed LAN, where the vendor manages the equipment
from the demarc to the phone set.
SIP trunking is available.
This is the equivalent
of the old ISDN PRIs using the VoIP infrastructure.
Then, you know like those circles that are shown,
those are actually pretty good
because they actually show the pricing elements.
In the use cases, I will be going through the details
of each one of those cost elements and the actual CLINs
and some pricing level information.
So just hold that thought if you have questions
about those circles at the bottom because I'm going
to be going through those in detail.
So this is for the unified communication services.
You can have it hosted at the provider's facility.
There's managed UCS where the contractor provides manages
and maintains the UCS system.
Or some type of hybrid where it's a mixture of,
it's mixed of hosted and premises based.
Again, you know, like the price components are there,
and I'm going to be showing it in detail during the use cases.
So before we go and actually explore the requirements
of development, do we have any questions up to this point?
All right.
So as we embark on this modernization transition
project, if you don't have some type of plan at this point,
on how to embark on it.
First, work on establishing your objectives.
This is where you state your main goals.
I included some examples.
Identify the priorities.
Again, I listed some examples.
The priorities will help out when it's time
to make some hard decisions when you get
to the more finer aspects and some cost elements.
You have to build the right team, provided some examples
of who should be in your team.
In my opinion, there should be a lot of OCIO involvement.
The chief information security officer, the CISO,
should be part of the team.
I would even recommend to start out early, you know,
because a lot of delays occur
when they're not involved right from the start.
And then as you start out with this process,
make sure you know your current voice network
and infrastructure.
How everything is tied together,
and you have the diagrams that will be needed.
Validate your inventory.
Make sure you scrub the inventory that you were provided
to make sure that it's accurate.
Have a compiled list of voice service concerns,
issues, and problems.
A lot of those can turn into requirements,
so there are things that folks are not very happy
about at this point.
This can be an opportunity to actually address all
of those during transition or modernization.
And identify some specific constraints, you know,
because those are things that may be happening
within your agencies that nobody else is aware of.
So those would be good to bring up at this point.
Now we're going to go through the more detailed portions
of the requirements development phase.
So first you have to ask, you know, like is this going
to be a totally new system or do you want
to integrate something that's currently in your system.
Some agencies, they have fairly new infrastructure
or some phone systems that they might want to reuse.
Are you looking for a converged or dedicated voice network?
So I know that the regions one, two,
and three VoIP service provided through Networx
that Ray mentioned earlier,
that actually is using a dedicated voice network.
At this point, the highly recommended solutions is more
of a converged solution, so you can get more, you can get more
of the efficiencies, but a lot of the security folks or a lot
of the other folks in your CIO shops may have some ideas
about that, that's the reason why they have to be part
of the decision making here.
Are you going to have a hosted or premises-based?
I would say generally hosted is the most
cost-effective solution.
Premise-based is when the equipment will be somewhere
in your building or your campus location.
Will you need existing cabling,
or will you use existing cabling or new cabling?
So a lot of agencies are opting to use a lot of Wi-Fi,
so will you include Wi-Fi as part
of the infrastructure upgrade?
So this one here about, you know, usage, this on net,
or is it, if it's OCONUS, it's included in the price.
We get some questions, where agencies want
to get flat rate for OCONUS.
We recommend that agencies go for usage here, you know,
like for every six second increment.
When we did an analysis, it's possible that you will pay
up to ten times more if you're going to be using some type
of flat rate for overseas long distance, because the rates
from some countries, like underdeveloped countries
and some well-developed countries,
it's quite a difference.
So we highly recommend if you're going
to use some overseas OCONUS long distance to use usage.
If you do have to use some type of flat rate arrangement,
I would say that identify the countries that you're going
to be using and negotiate from that point.
What are the standard features?
I will show that there are 23 standard features.
If your agency is looking at additional features,
you actually have to highlight it then.
Soft phones or desk phones,
I would say that soft phones will not work in most instances
if it's a dedicated voice network only.
So for the most part, soft phones work
in converged environments.
I do know that when I was in Philadelphia when we relocated
to a new building, all new employees did not get a hard
phone anymore.
Everybody got a soft phone.
So a lot of agencies are going to the soft phones.
So Gerry, following my portion,
will be covering GFEs quite a bit.
If your agency, you guys are currently using a lot
of newer equipment, VoIP equipment or any other equipment
that you can still reuse, you have to identify those.
And then I will like,
like ignore that what payment terms will you use
in your agency because I actually have another slide
showing those payment terms in detail.
So this is a big one, managed LAN or in-house LAN or in-house,
where you are going to be responsible for it.
In a lot of situations, this might not make sense
if you have a whole lot of IT support that managed land,
you won't need it because you have IT support,
in-house IT support.
But in smaller offices or remote locations
where there are not a whole lot of IT support,
this may be the smarter choice.
And one disclaimer at the bottom, you know,
not necessarily an all, an exhaustive list, but I would say
that it captures most of the medium-level concerns
or requirements that you have to do or explore.
All right, this one here, the finer points,
I would say that there are 23 standard features.
This should cover everything or most of what you need.
I would say that voicemail is an additional feature,
so you need to identify how many seats will need voicemail.
Another feature that may be needed
by the agency is auto attendance.
So, and this is kind of like the big rocks that I mentioned,
if there are issues, concerns being brought up right now,
those are some of the features that you may want to add in,
especially if it's not covered in this standard features.
I can pause here for a little bit before we actually go
into more detail.
Any questions?
>> How do you plan on handling call centers?
I don't see them addressed anywhere it appears.
>> You know, I think there's actually a specific, hang on,
that's a separate service.
So right here, contact center services.
So that's a different service area.
So if you do want to explore a whole lot of it,
that service guide is available in the public pricer,
so that would be a very good place to start.
Any other questions?
>> I have a question.
We're going to maintain our equipment.
We have VoIP and soft phones.
What we're going to do is just transition our trunks,
and I'm a little concerned
because only three vendors are doing circuit switched voice,
because we're going to have T1's and POTS.
>> So going back to this one here, so CSVS--
>> Oh, yeah, okay.
>> There are five vendors.
>> Yeah, Granite is not in the area that we're at.
Verizon and CenturyLink are the only two, I believe.
We have five different locations.
>> This is Steve at USGS, I've had a discussion
with CenturyLink, and it's my understanding
that they're SIP trunk.
They can, they'll terminate it to the location as SIP,
but then they can make it look like a PRI.
>> Well, we can't use SIP, it's not an approved--
>> Because I've got a
>> SIP's not an approved protocol for FLETC.
>> Yeah.
>> Well, they're still delivering PRI to you.
The best thing to do is get your requirement together,
get it down, and when we, when you solicit, you will find out,
you know, who can provide service at those locations.
That may force, as well, vendors to mod
and add locations or CBSAs.
And then another point you said
that you're already using VoIP, right.
>> Yeah.
>> So, I don't know if you're looking
into using SIP trunk service, but essentially--
>> We did, and it was not approved by our agency.
>> Okay. All right.
Okay. Cross that thought.
Okay.
>> Yeah, we've been there already, but thank you.
>> On the slide where you had the 23 features--
>> Yes.
>> I was curious to know
if under the existing GSA solutions are these features all
individually billed on individual CLINs
so that we can see them in our AAI reports, or are some,
or all of these not separately priced?
>> So this comes with it.
So if you buy a seat, this comes with it.
>> So we don't have any data
on actual usage of specific features?
>> I'm not sure what granularity you will get from that one.
I imagine there's that telephone managed, that,
see that IP telephony manager, and that's different
for every single vendor, so I'm not sure what you can see there,
but that will be a good question to ask during evaluation.
You can use that as an evaluation,
technical evaluation fact or a requirement somewhere there.
>> We can't, we can't evaluate it
if we don't know what our current usage is, is my concern.
So right now, if it's not being billed separately
from the service charge, then we don't know how much usage
of one feature we have versus another.
>> So, and Caroline, this is right.
This is Ray.
You're correct that it's not probably separately billed
out in IAA, in TOPS inventory.
However, when you get the hosted VoIP,
you get all these features, and there's really, I have no way
of telling you if they're being used or not.
They are available per seat, and they are not separately billed.
>> Okay, so there is no source for us to get any kind
of usage statistics currently?
>> I'll look into that, but as far as I, I'm just thinking
out loud, I don't think so, and again these are all features
that are available when you buy the seat off, we got seats off
of the Networx contract and the LSAs.
>> Right.
>> And it's all bundled together.
If you use it, you use it.
If you don't, you don't.
>> If GSA were competing this,
how would you write a requirement for a site
where you don't know what feature usage you actually have,
and in some cases vendors charge for things
but in other cases they don't.
How do you suggest we approach that?
>> Caroline, I would suggest,
there's no pricing power anymore with features.
Everyone provides them.
Ray earlier provided the price points.
There is no separately ordered features anymore.
You, commercially you tend to get more
than what the government has, 23 presently.
But they're not separately priced nor separately ordered.
For your customers today, if you're served
by Networx Enterprise, you can actually on an agency
by agency basis empower your users what features they can
or cannot use.
So right now, you turn on which 23 will be active
at any given time, and so that's really in the hands
of the subscriber presently under, for instance,
the HHS San Francisco site, that is a site
in which you could determine your usage yourself.
But our experience is there's,
we get essentially the essential set, you see the 23,
and there was no premium attributed to that.
It's all bundled.
>> Okay, okay.
And that's true under EIS pricing as well?
>> Yes.
>> Yes.
>> Okay. Thank you.
>> This is Steve Holder at USGS.
How do you guys under EIS plan to handle,
especially in a hosted environment all the analog
devices that you and I know many of us have,
such as fax machines, conference room phones, modems,
alarm lines, elevator phones, whatever.
It seems that they've all been kicked to the curb even though
that technology hasn't really been replaced with anything.
>> What's the practice.
>> Yeah, I'm just curious too.
>> Okay, this is what our practice has been.
This is our success or our supply.
Again, this is hosted.
Our 6800 subscriber base is exclusively hosted,
but what we buy and what the vendors tend
to resell is equipment for Media Tricks.
There's terminal devices that do the conversion at the premise.
Media Tricks is a Canadian firm spun off from Nortel.
It may have been repurchased, but that was the one that most
of our suppliers, and our supply base is predominantly AT&T
and Verizon, they use Media Tricks.
And there's other, this is not an endorsement,
but the solutions are mature, out there, and working,
and they would be readily available as SREs.
So solutions are out there.
Price points, they're about 80 to $100 one off, non-recurring.
So they're available.
They're available today, available under EIS.
>> Now have you guys validated that those are TAA compliant?
I.e., country of manufacture?
Because I know our agency
and many others think TAA is pretty much mandatory.
>> That would be another acquisition question I'm going
to have to get back to you on.
>> Any additional questions?
>> So they're converting to analog?
>> Yes, if that's Caroline,
Caroline actually I am quite familiar with your--
>> It's Renee.
>> Okay, the bill of, yes, that converts the analog.
So those will be facsimiles or public phones in a lobby,
for instance, where you still want to use the old--
>> We have over a thousand analog end points.
>> Okay, well you would have to--
>> Or security, we need POTS lines for security
in the event we lose our system.
I mean, they can't go away.
>> Okay.
>> Right, and I know we've got locations that we've got,
you know, hundreds or thousands of these devices as well
as we've got secure facilities that are running ISDN devices.
>> Yes.
>> Because at the time,
there weren't appropriate TSG6 compliant IP solutions.
So I mean there's a lot
of the old TDM stuff you guys are just kicking to the curb
that agencies don't have the money
to do a run out, rip, and replace.
>> So, believe me, believe me, we do know there's a lot of TDM,
POTS, Centrex analog lines out there.
EIS, there are contractors on EIS, either traditional telco's
or resellers that provide TDM.
It is out there.
>> For me it's not an issue because most
of this is off my PBX's, but I think some
of the concerns are going to be, is more,
I think in the hosted environment
versus the premise-based environment.
>> Well as Gerry was saying, so in a host environment, you can,
if you have analog requirements, you can stay TDM
with another provider, or you can, as Gerry was explaining,
have a device that converts IP
into an analog signal at a location.
>> Yeah, well after that Ray,
there's some strategies I have towards the end of the briefing.
If any, kind of like those type of questions,
we can address them there, because there are strategies,
like the first strategy pointed out is more of like a like for
like service transition.
So that if you do have some type of TDM services at this point,
you can do a like for like, knowing that eventually it needs
to be modernized because that's just the way the industry
is turning.
So we do have some suggestions at the end
that I can address at that point.
>> And, again, also I want to say, not to raise the red flags,
but more and more we're seeing it from companies
and we're seeing it in the trade magazines, TDM is going away.
This is one area that, you know,
the telephone companies want to get out of.
So as time goes on, as time goes on, the availability of TDM,
if you want it or not, you're going to have
to convert to something.
And the price points for TDM you're going
to see are going to go up.
There's more, you see it every day, and it depends
on who you talk to, but you see more
and more TDM being sun-setting.
>> Right--
>> But you're talking at the, you're talking
at the telco level, and I know telco's have sold off their TDM
and other carriers have bought it up, so it's,
that copper infrastructure is still there,
it's still being used.
Certain players gave it up,
but the big issue is all these TDM end points that are
at our location, so for any site that's considering hosted,
that's probably going to be the biggest, you know,
the biggest attractor from them going hosted because none
of your hosted solutions--
and if I've got a thousand TDM devices, I am not going to go
out and buy a thousand of these media converters,
because that's just not cost effective.
So you've really, and there are some agencies
that have unique security requirements,
as the other caller mentioned, that they're not allowed,
SIP trunks aren't allowed, so there's a lot of agencies
that have, you know, some serious security battles
that need to be fought, and we're kind
of being left out in the cold.
>> I would have to agree with you guys on that
because the security, has anyone done a security risk assessment
of all this?
>> And back when it was all TDM you didn't have to worry
about them hacking it, because they couldn't.
>> Exactly, that's why I'm saying with our, you know,
DHS and a few other components underneath it,
I mean there's a lot of security risks here that are involved
that need to be thought out before, you know,
everyone just jumps out.
>> I will say that-- oh, excuse me.
I will say that some of the solutions
that we've seen are Fed Ramp compliant.
I will say that, you know, like as part of the requirement
when the solicitation went out,
there were some security-related requirements specific
to this contract.
So we will take note that that is a concern during this
workshop, and we'll side out the security-related information
that's part of the contract.
Scott, can you make sure that that's highlighted
so we can provide it at a later time, security items?
>> Yep. We're taking a note on that now, thanks Karl.
>> And if you're adding agency names to that,
the FAA has a high requirement for TDM,
POTS line service also, very high.
>> FLETC does too, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
>> So an important, an important point that should be made is
that yes, almost every agency has legacy technology out there.
You've got specialized equipment running off it.
What's really important, because the EIS contracts offer a wide
variety of just about everything that is available
in the market today, so the important thing is
to document these requirements that you have, and they need
to get into the hands of the EIS contractors so they can respond
to you with the best solutions.
There's quite a variety from major carriers
to total resale things that are,
you know legacy stuff that's out there.
It's very important to do that.
Another thing you may want to consider is
that GSA is hosting a day coming up where you can come in
and talk with all the EIS contractors,
and you may very well want to document these items
and do some market research with these folks to talk
about the specific concerns you have
and see what creative solutions that they have.
>> Okay, if I could ask to take a step back real quickly.
You were going to mention, when you were on VoIP services,
you were going to mention a SIP trunk.
>> Yes.
>> And I wanted to hear the remark that you were going
to make in regards to SIP trunking.
>> So, this is the SIP trunking.
It's available.
So this is, if you just require, you know,
like you don't need that per seat charge.
You just need the trunking portion of it.
That's how you will order it.
There's an extensive explanation of it in the service guide,
you know, that you can access through the pricer, again.
It's not one of the use cases I am showing today,
but we can definitely address
that at a later time if there's interest.
And I would say that the service guide
in the pricer can help you out on that one.
And you can even see the individual CLINs, the pricing,
so you can learn more about it.
>> Okay, thank you.
>> On the SIP trunks, I have a question.
Is everything I've seen it looks to be for a finite max quantity
of calls, kind of tied, kind of equated the way I've seen it
to B channels on a PRI.
Is there any option for any kind of bursting, i.e.,
my normal calling pattern is X, and every once in a while I need
to spike to Y. Is anything like that built in?
>> Yes, there are.
>> Or when you hit the ceiling, you hit the ceiling?
>> Yes, there are bursting CLINs.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> Does it give you more bandwidth,
or does it just change the codec?
>> Yeah, it's, I would highly recommend looking
at that service guide because it does show,
and in the actual CLINs, you know, like the amount of DIDs,
the amount of, you know, like bursting trunks.
It's all explained there,
and you can even see how it's priced.
So this one here, I did a side-by-side, well,
one on top of each other comparison on a per seat price.
One is the IPVS hosted, one is the premises-based,
and then there's one for UCS.
This one actually turns out pretty interesting
because on the average, hosted IPVS is around $15,
and like that's just roughly $15.
Average premise-based is around $25, and then of course,
you know, it looks expensive, you know, like that $25.
>> Excuse me, Karl.
>> And then--
>> Oh Scott, can you go ahead and go back to presentation mode
so your screen is fully presentable?
>> Sure, thanks.
>> Yeah, so it's a comparison, right.
And then UCS is around $20, but as I say those generalizations,
you will look at AT&T premise-base, it's at $7.86.
So it's a mixed bag.
Okay. It was just interesting to see where kind
of like the averages fall.
As I mentioned, typically the IPVS hosted is the cheapest
version, but AT&T's pricing is at $7.86 for premise-based,
but then again you have to look at the total solution
because this is just a per-seat.
After you include all the other price elements,
it might be a different story.
So for service-related equipment,
here's the pricing structure.
So you can pay upright for the equipment or stretch it
out for 12, 24, 36, or 48 months, and once it is paid,
you know, you have an option whether you want
to take ownership of it, of the equipment.
There are non-recurring charges for installation,
inside moves and upgrades.
And there's also a monthly recurring fee of cost
for monthly maintenance charge.
So now actually I'm going to go into detail at the CLIN level
and at the pricing level for each one of the scenarios
because this is going to go through in depth.
You remember those cost elements
that I showed earlier, those circles on top.
What are the MRC charges, the nonrecurring charges, the usage,
the features, the access charge.
So we pulled out from the pricer the actual CLINs,
so say for example, the per seat,
the monthly recurring costs for that, for the hosted IPVS.
There's that CLIN there.
Highlighting that unlimited, net to net,
and Conus to Conus calls are included.
If you want to include
that managed LAN portion, that's the CLIN.
PSAP, that's priced separately.
PSAP is public safety answering point.
That's the 9-1-1, and then
of course there's service-related equipment
monthly maintenance, the one I just mentioned
from the SRE slide.
And then the non-recurring costs, you know,
like those are the things that are non-recurring,
and those are the specific CLINs.
For usage, here again, you know, like I mentioned,
it's highly encouraged that you use the usage side,
charge every six-second increment.
And then there's the voice mailbox,
that's the CLIN for that.
And we just showed an example, you know,
like of an access arrangement for your particular scenario,
if you need some type of 10 meg circuit for your location.
That's the CLINs, but that's just an example.
Like I said, that could be, that would be different depending
on how many users you have in a particular site.
So this one here, this shows monthly recurrent costs
for IPVS.
A couple in the notes, it does not include monthly access
costs, because that could be different, you know,
like it cannot be analyzed at this point
on an individual basis.
This also shows list pricing.
So these are just ceiling prices.
Historically vendors will provide discounts
when you do a fair opportunity.
So that first total there, it includes managed LAN.
Excuse me, the first total is,
it does not have the managed LAN port.
It just has hosted IPVS, the voicemail and PSAP,
and it averages out around $20 per seat,
and then if you add the managed LAN portion of it,
it goes to around $30.
As I mentioned, you know, like depending on the situation,
if it's a large campus and you have a lot of IT support,
it might not be the best way to go to use that managed LAN.
Then I'm going to go through some scenarios
for premise-based.
Again, you know, like the cost components and the actual CLINs
that will pertain to it.
So this is, again, the premise-based,
like some of the averages.
The average cost for premise based is around $30.
Then if you add the managed LAN portion, it's about $40.
So this is about, in comparison, you know, the hosted is
about $10 cheaper generally,
and then again the AT&T specific pricing here kind
of busted what I just said.
They're an outlier.
Now we're going to do same type of scenario for hosted UCS.
Okay. So with unified communication service,
these are the price components.
I would say that for unified communications,
it's heavy customized solutions, heavily customized solutions,
so you have to do some type of network design and engineering,
and that's an ICB, you know, like the more complicated it is,
imagine that it'll cost more.
And that's the reason why
that requirements identification is very, very critical.
You have to provide the providers all that information
so they can provide you the right pricing.
All right, and then we actually have a price for hosted UCS,
a per-seat price, but a whole lot
of the other price elements are actually ICBs,
and then if you look at the managed
and the hybrid, they're all ICBs.
So I didn't make a separate slide
for those, because it's all ICB.
I cannot provide pricing at this point to show some type
of pricing description.
So we did show this though,
for the hosted unified communications.
The optional charges, you know, for web conferencing,
video conferencing, and audio conferencing.
Okay. So this actually, when I mentioned earlier
that I will show some type of strategies how to transition,
as you can see, you know, like eventually TDM will go away,
so we actually have to modernize eventually, right.
But we do have two competing forces right now,
or not necessarily competing but two strong forces,
the transition force and the modernized force, right.
So one of the things, like that first one,
you can go like for like, you know,
like for whatever service you have right now,
whether it's CSVS or IPVS, and then you can transition
to an all IPVS sometime in the future, and you can state
that in your requirement.
And I've listed some of the advantages and disadvantages.
There's that, you know, go ahead and dive in,
make transition to all IPVS.
You can dive in into
that implement unified communications at this point.
You know, and like so you can take advantage
of all the benefits of having an integrated communication suite.
But I would say with UCS, you know,
it takes extensive coordination with the enterprise IT team,
and your WAN must be engineered just for that bandwidth,
especially when you're starting to add video
and data communications there.
So we've seen this.
We've been thinking for a long time
for the fourth option there, where you put together some type
of managed network service that's inclusive
of all the items.
Use some type of managed network service TUC to obtain a firm,
fixed price for an office building or, an office,
a building, or a campus.
You have to, you have to define it very well, you know,
like what are the things that are included
and what's not included.
One of the things that's good about this is
that it can eliminate the service order portion
because you say the example that we'd like to use is
that if you have a building normally, you know,
like with 95 employees, you can set it up where you,
you can provide services up to 100,
so as long as you're staying
with that 100, you're within scope.
You can define that hosted per seat price is included.
The managed LAN is included, PSAP, all those cost elements.
All the MAC, moves, adds, and changes.
All the sets are included,
and then you get a firm, fixed price.
One of the disadvantages of course, this might cost more.
We were speaking with an agency the other day whom is looking
into using a managed network service type of arrangement,
and the way they looked at it is that 30 percent
that they pay right now for full service is how they actually
look at justifying extra cost for doing this type
of arrangement, that number four option.
At this point, I can open it up.
Any questions or discussion points at this point?
Did you, in the scenarios here, did you mention,
and I may have missed it, diversity, single point
of failure, how are these built into the IP voice service?
>> Yeah, yeah.
So those are, will go along with service
and like agency-specific requirements and limitations,
or it can even go along with, you know,
like if there are issues, concerns that's unique
to the agency, those are items that can be brought up then
as part of the requirements development piece.
So that's the reason why we put it there, you know,
like agency specific concern.
Because we try to make a balance.
We can make this as detailed or, you know, at least easier
to digest, but that's a very good point that needs
to be identified at the agency specific level.
>> Okay, thank you.
>> No problem.
>> Karl, this is Steve at USGS.
You've got video conferencing,
web conferencing, audio conferencing.
Do any of those include what I'll call live streaming, i.e.,
we have town hall type events.
We do basically a one-way broadcast,
and then we record it.
You know, viewers can watch it live.
They can watch it later because we've recorded it,
and they can submit questions kind of like we are via chat.
I didn't see, you know was something like that offered?
Because I couldn't really tell.
>> You know, my answer to that is it's very possible.
The reason why I'm saying it's very possible is
because I looked at the actual proposals from the vendors.
If you get an agency pricer, you know, like the public pricer,
you know, you won't have access
to the actual proposals from the vendors.
So if you get the agency pricer account,
you can go to the contract documents,
look at their technical proposal, and if you look
at that, you may be able to see, you know,
like a specific solution will be able to accommodate that.
And, you know, like did I identify five
or six UCS providers?
So if you dig deep into those six proposals,
you may be able to see it.
When I was looking at those proposals,
I didn't specifically look for that item.
So, but they're all, it's a mixed bag.
That's what I'm saying.
All the providers propose something different
from each other.
Karl, this is Ray, and again I'll just say as well,
what you described there seems to be within the scope
of the contract, and if it's not on contract, again, it all comes
down to your requirement.
Whatever your requirements, you need to find them in your PWS
or statement of work, you know, industry, you got 10 EIS,
vendors would propose on that.
And the contract could be modified for that.
>> Karl, we're running low on time over here,
so if you can just speed it up a little bit, we appreciate it.
Thank you.
>> And this one actually, I got two more slides,
and this one here we're saying that everybody wins
if you have a quality solicitation.
So reach out to your agency managers
to get some type of TOA support.
We have the SOW assistance SOW, excuse me,
solicitation and SOW assist tool.
So it's actually pretty good tool.
You sit down with an expert, go through your requirements,
and then at the end of the session, you'll get a draft SOW
in MS Word format using the uniform contract format
at the 80 percent level, and then you get it to 100 percent
from then on, but at least the formatting is good,
and then it'll ask you the right questions,
so it'll lead you to the right answers.
And in summary, EIS can meet your requirements.
As you come up with your agency's transition
and modernization strategy,
make sure that you capture requirements clearly
to produce a quality solicitation,
because that's a win-win for everybody.
And lastly, we are here to help
if you need additional assistance.
And, again, you know, like I cannot emphasize again,
you know, like go to the public pricer or the agency pricer
if you have an account or request an account
if you don't have one, because there's a wealth of information
that you can access there.
Ray, that's the end of my presentation.
>> Okay, Karl, thank you.
So we'll just continue on here, and again we will,
Gerry will pause for questions.
So let me introduce Gerry Brosnan, who will talk about
and give information on the GSA managed VoIP customer list
that we have today.
Again, like I said earlier, most of the inventory
in full service is TDM, PRIs, BRIs, analog lines,
Centrex lines, etc. There is about 6800 VoIP seats
that we provide under full service.
So let me turn it over to Gerry.
One second here, we're just setting up the screen.
>> Okay, thank you, Ray.
Now, again, this is a bit more focused.
Karl provided a broad view of what's available under EIS.
I am now directing your attention
to our existing sources of supply, the fact that we are,
as Ray indicated, we serve approximately 7000 subscribers
today, and they're throughout the country,
throughout the 802 CBSAs, and most notably is
that we obtain our solutions for approximately 3000
of our VoIP seats via Networx.
And the significance of that is that GSA as the customer
of record, we can take title to the equipment at the conclusion,
at the expiration of the Networx Enterprise contract,
we will get ownership of the phones
that serve nearly half of our customer base.
So GSA's intent is to in turn transfer those phones to you,
our end customers, at no cost.
So the notable aspect here is we have identified sites
where you can avail these phones, desktop phones.
So come May 2020, approximately 3100 seats,
you'll have desktop phones to avail of.
It's strictly at your choice.
You need not, there's no compelling reason,
but let me emphasize that these phones are standards based.
They'll work with anybody.
They're essentially high volume, branded.
They tend to be Polycom and Cisco phones.
We've been buying with the, among the five suppliers
under Networx, they tend to resell Cisco, Polycom, others.
But I say that because they'll use, you can bring these
to the table and compel your ten EIS service providers
to make use of these and support your solution.
So, I've done, what we've done here for purposes
of this presentation is merely identify these locations
by agency, city, and state.
So it's really an artifact.
This is a takeaway.
There's not a big narrative here, but you have to be mindful
of what will become available next month.
Of course, you know of the AAI, but with the release in April,
there will be a new tab in report 24.
So report 24 is more or less the full service dedicated report.
Now you can seek all of your VoIP records in a dedicated tab.
So, look for that next month
and you can see all the detail necessary.
So the purpose, again, we're identifying sites
where you can reuse phones.
And I wanted to share, these are the various,
this is your artifact.
This is for your takeaway when we distribute the slides.
This identifies everybody that's using our VoIP and where.
And we've done it at the city level
because this is something we can share in this medium.
--
Oh, okay. Thank you.
Okay, very good, thank you.
So this is the summary view of where we are, our supply record,
and you'll see where we can and cannot take title of the phones.
Approximately half of our supply base,
we don't have the contractual terms
that give us the assurance we can get the equipment.
We will seek ownership, but at this time,
we can only stand behind the fact that we have the terms
and conditions under Networx, allowing us to take ownership
of the devices and in turn transferring that ownership
to you, our customers.
So, this is for further inspection.
I've got all the regions, but more notably,
look at your AAI report, number 24, and the tab.
But actually what you see here gives you a rough idea in terms
of building up your IGCE, your buy, your bill of material
for your J tables, for your solicitation.
You can at least see where the phones can be reused.
And in the interest of time,
let me just tell you some of the value.
This is, what you see on this slide,
this is one of our sites in St. Louis.
It's Spruce Street, large federal building, but the phone
on a 36-month basis, you see it's a $4 cost.
This is the type of cost you could avoid.
This is in the instance where we opted for leasing
over 36 months, and it constitutes at least
about 12 percent of the monthly recurring.
And so this is a nontrivial cost that can be avoided,
and Karl already mentioned the terms.
EIS and Networx effectively have the same terms
of buying equipment.
The lease or buy, and the leasing, more importantly,
we would have the option
of taking title or taking ownership.
Here's some slides.
Let me just conclude this segment
with some slides indicating the value of this equipment
that we'll be transferring.
What you see here are the leading equipment
that we tend to have in the field.
As I mentioned, these are offerings from two
of our largest suppliers under Networx,
and both of them are effectively type approving only two vendors.
So this is not an endorsement.
This is just the commercial, the indirect sales channel
that we're buying, and we're buying Polycom and Cisco.
All of these are standards based,
but look at the two highlighted columns.
This is your one-time price or the price of these devices
on a 36-month term basis.
So this is, this equipment is pretty significant in terms
of what you could avoid.
So all of this will be available May 2020
where we will have ownership of these devices.
So let me conclude, the takeaway for here,
we're going to transfer the phones.
We have at least 3000 phones identified desktop devices
that we intend to transfer at the conclusion
of the Networx Enterprise contract, May 2020.
They will be available for all of our customers,
and during the course of the transition planning,
we suggest strongly that you consider this,
and at this point let me wrap, let me hand it back to Ray,
who will conclude the session.
>> So, I'll just open it up now for any questions.
Now before any questions come in, you know, there's a lot
of pressure on government and coming
from the administration about modernizing.
And that presents a lot of problems
because you need time and you need money.
I get that.
I think we all get that.
There's also pressure coming from industry on TDM.
You know, and that's reflected
in the availability and in price points.
And as more time goes on and on, we're going to hear more
and more the stories about, you know, TDMs going away.
You know, we've been hearing that for years now.
I get it. I hear you.
And it's still out there.
Eventually it's going to get there.
And the natural replacement for TDM is IP.
Either in an enterprise-wide unified communications
environment or a separate network using hosted voice
over IP.
So now's our time with the EIS contract
to really take the opportunity to modernize wherever possible.
As Karl kind of laid out, you know,
it could possibly be done in phases.
But we're going to continue as a government seeing more
and more pressure to modernize.
And I understand, it's a challenge.
I understand there is thousands of elevator phones
and security phones and alarms and so forth.
There are solutions out there, you know, to replace that stuff.
Yes. Does it take time and funding
and resources to replace that?
But, you know, over time and, you know, that's what,
if the requirement is still there,
that's what we have to work towards.
So at this point I'll just open it up.
If anybody wants to have any questions on the bridge?
>> Hi, Ray.
This is Iris Chin from HHS.
>> Hi, Iris.
>> There's a mention that when we receive the response
from our RFPs, we can consider different solutions
to replace the current services.
One of my concerns is that since the full service is no longer
available, agencies lost the combined buying power,
what if we have locations
that does not even receive a proposal for solution?
>> I don't know how proposals are going to come back.
I think you're going to see for the coverage that we have
in the full service, I think there is going
to be availability.
I think there will be availability for TDM,
and I think there will be availability for VoIP.
I mean I don't know, and you don't know
until you actually send it out, your requirement.
And again, your requirement depends
on how you structure your requirement.
You may be looking for, you know, you may be looking
for a like-for-like solution
and also an optional transformational solution.
You can, you know, you can put that into your requirement,
and you can evaluate that
and make decisions based off of that.
>> Does EIS provide microwave shots
with telecommunication services?
>> I don't know.
>> Good question.
We also have microwave.
>> Peter, can you take that, we'll take that as question.
I would, I don't know.
Do you have any more specifics on the requirement,
the technical specifics of it that you can provide?
>> Yes, we have services because the location is in the middle
of nowhere, so the only way the telecommunication
and data communication services can be provided is
through microwave.
I have locations.
If you want, I can send you the information.
>> Well, I'm more concerned with the technical requirement of it.
>> The technical requirement is that you have the connectivity.
>> Do you actually specify a requirement
that something must be delivered via microwave,
or have you ordered access,
and your provider has decided microwave is the best way
to deliver that.
Under EIS--
>> It's the latter, Bill.
>> Yeah. So under EIS those conditions still exist.
Your requirement is for access with a certain amount
of bandwidth and everything.
>> Correct.
>> You shouldn't have to be concerned
about their delivery method.
They need to use a delivery method
that meets your specifications.
>> And works with our hardware.
>> Yeah.
>> Yes.
>> And so you just make sure, you know,
if you've got specific hardware, it's got to work with them.
It will know specs and ask those ten,
tell us what you can provide.
>> Are there any other questions on the panel.
>> No.
>> Any other questions.
>> Nope.
>> So, I guess with that, we'll wrap up.
I appreciate everybody's attendance.
We have a couple questions and action items,
and we'll get answers to those,
and we'll get those most likely posted--
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