Park Road Post is a division of The Film Unit and is based in a new purpose-built facility in Miramar, Wellington. Owned by Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson, The Film Unit specialises in post-production film work including sound mixing, film transfers and film processing. In an industry that expects the latest in technological solutions, the company is at the cutting edge – and is Australasia’s most comprehensive film post-production facility. For example, The Lord Of The Rings films were all serviced by The Film Unit with The Return Of The King, also being mixed in the new Park Road Post facility.

The challenge
But as any Hollywood insider can tell you, making it in the film business is all about effective communication – something that was very top-of-mind when Park Road Post set about developing a new custom-built campus in Wellington recently. High on the agenda was finding a PABX system to provide a telephony solution for up to 100 users at the facility. In order to meet its current and future needs, Park Road’s new system needed to meet the following specific requirements:

• An ability to be inherently scalable and adaptable to cater for future business requirements
• Integrated voice mail and unified messaging
• Wireless telephony for selected users
• A robust design and componentry
• Supported by a supplier capable of meeting service level agreements and training staff
• Integration with future applications
• Easy and inexpensive moves, adds and changes
• Cost effective.

“Our industry is all about communication with clients around the world,” says Park Road Post sound and IT manager John Neill. “So we needed the best in communication systems. We also have to be able to adjust the structure to suit the latest project requirements. IBM demonstrated that VoIP would provide a cost-effective answer to our needs.”

IP Telephony was Park Road Post’s preferred phone system choice, but it believed the cost would be well above its starting budget. After a demonstration of the benefits of true IP telephony, however, the company decided to forego putting in a limited system (base cabling and switching infrastructure designed with a major future upgrade in mind) and instead increase its ROI by installing a full IP telephony system at the outset – thus avoiding a major upgrade in a couple of years.

IBM was invited to bid and design the VoIP infrastructure based on Cisco’s AVVID (Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data), Wireless Telephony and Unity Voice Mail solutions. The cost of the proposed solution was marginally higher than the legacy PABX systems that Park Road Post had evaluated, however Neill says the benefits of the solution, such as scalability, future integration with existing applications and other industry networks, far outweighed the additional costs.

The implementation phase posed several challenges for IBM. The first challenge being that this was the first deployment of Cisco Wire-less IP phones in New Zealand. Secondly, IP wireless phones have less reach than a wireless LAN card, which made Access Point positioning a critical aspect to the success of the project – and this was made more difficult because the building was still being erected. Another challenge was the integration of some third party switches with Cisco’s IP phones. These issues were all quickly resolved, however, by vendors collaborating to ensure a seamless implementation for Park Road Post.

Solution overview
So how did they do it? IBM installed the switching infrastructure consist-ing of a resilient core and Power Over Ethernet access switches across the new campus site. A resilient IP Telephony Cisco Call Manager solution was deployed on the new network to provide telephony connections to all users, along with Cisco Unity voicemail.

As many key staff would typically not be desk-bound, several wireless access points were installed to provide wireless IP phone connectivity throughout the campus for a dozen users. The solution was also integrated with the existing Centrex Telephony network so that internal users could retain the functionality of dialling Centrex short code numbers from the internal network to remote sites.

IBM provided essential training to The Film Unit team, ensuring that they could perform simple unassisted moves, adds and changes using a GUI interface (standard point & click computer monitor) – a task that often required external technicians for legacy PABX systems. The network is still growing as the campus site is completed but the main components of the solution have been installed and additional users can easily be added.

Business benefits
The Film Unit is now investigating alternative business ventures that have exciting prospects for its growth. One example is the option of leasing out a film studio complete with a secure integrated data and telephony service that will not interfere with the production network. It is envisaged that it will charge on volume usage, providing its customers with data, voice and internet access via the choice of a fixed infrastructure or a wireless LAN.

The bottom line
Both IBM and The Film Unit were aware of the risks involved with implementing new telephony technologies into this solution. They worked closely together over the course of the project to ensure all risks were identified and any issues were addressed and resolved quickly. Even through the challenges that were presented, the project met time and budget specifications and Park Road Post is already talking about the next phases of integration and has begun to realise the rewards of increased flexibility, scalability and functionality that the Cisco IP Telephony solution provides.

For more information
Verdon Kelliher
IBM
09 359 4022
verdon.kelliher@nz.ibm.com
www.ibm.com/nz

July 2004