Next up was the network architecture, which will be responsible for routing and switching the voice packets over our corporate network. This wasn't a big worry, since our network team is very competent. Still, separate virtual LANs for voice, data and management and additional router configurations will be needed to secure the environment.

Finally, I had to assess the Cisco Remote Operations Support (CROS), an outsourced monitoring and management service we'll be using for our IP telephony infrastructure.

Microsoft's part

The implementation of Call Manager and Unity Server is at its heart the deployment of a Windows 2000 server running some Cisco applications. As with any Microsoft installation, there are the usual concerns about service packs, critical updates and viruses. I also wanted to ensure that the operating system was hardened, so I had to remove any unneeded applications and services and make a few changes to the registry.

I also wanted to ensure that proper administrative control and auditing were enabled. The applications provide various levels of administrative access, and those levels must be tightly controlled. As for auditing, the applications can log various types of events, but I had to ensure that it was all enabled so that critical activity will be properly logged and monitored.