Indiana University, Nortel tout cost, operational benefits of unified communications at Toronto event

Campus style data and telephony integration can only realistically be done through unified communications, attendees of the IT360 Conference and Expo learned last week in Toronto. Just ask Indiana University and its more than 90,000 students, 18,000 faculty and staff and hundreds of thousands of alumni connected across eight campuses and thousands of kilometers. And Nortel Networks Corp., which is saving $22 million annually by having UC across 258 sites in 59 countries. When Indiana University wanted to streamline administrative processes and improve communication, while holding technology costs steady, they turned to unified communications (UC), said Allan MacGowan, total cost of ownership lead at Nortel. Faced with more that 236,000 email accounts, 35,000 analog telephones and 80,000 university and personal computers, Indiana University was connected in a very disconnected way. There was little, if any, integration between desktop and telephony applications. Campus phone lines and mobile devices were completely distinct. And while limited office space led to more remote workers, an increasingly mobile staff was still tied to specific desktops. "It really was an ad-hoc situation," MacGowan told Network Letter after his presentation. Now Indiana University is in the process of integrating a robust UC solution, including Nortel's Communication Server 2100, Microsoft's OCS/ Exchange/ Office 2007 System and Microsoft Active Directory. This has enabled the school to merge two SL-100 switches into a single VoIP platform, use one client for IM, presence, voice and conference, while leveraging the active directory to create community groups for OCS and greatly improve the tracking of, and communication between, staff, students and faculty. The benefits of the new system are already being realized, according to MacGowan. "The registrar can put out a broadcast IM to all physics alumni, or new students can automatically be hooked into a ‘new student' group and integrated into the university that much sooner," he said of two examples of new applications available with the system. MacGowan lists off a slew of potential savings that will also be realized through the systems installation, including reduced operational costs through software-only telephony-desktop integration, increased use of IM over email reducing disk storage demands and more inter-site meetings conducted via video conferencing, which cuts travel costs. But he seems to champion the value inherent in increased communications, connectivity, and efficiency, over dollars and cents. "They now can have virtual office hours between faculty and students, and students can record and archive tutorial sessions. In the past, their registrar's office couldn't return long distance calls to students. They just didn't have the budget. Now with the VoIP integration, they can place long distance calls to students over the data network at no cost. They're also seeing easier information sharing and integration between community groups," he boasted. Nortel rolls out UC across 258 sites in 59 countries Improved communications may appeal to enterprise, but increased savings and ROI really get them talking. As a provider of UC solutions, Nortel has also implemented unified communications much to its benefit both from an operational and cost savings perspective as well as from a communications aspect. With 258 sites, spanning 59 countries, over 31,000 employees and just under 20,000 supplier and partner users, Nortel has complex communications needs. In a typical month, its 2,350 servers and 40,000 desktops handle 48 million emails, 190 webcasts and 400 terabytes of stored data. By implementing the IP-PBX Communications Server 1000 and Multimedia Communications Server 5100 (MCS), Nortel realized $12 million a year in direct savings. Nortel estimates $5 million is saved in conferencing costs alone, with another $5 million in travel costs due to increased video conferencing. "We really are ideal candidates for UC. We depend on human-to-human communications and we have a lot of workers dispersed over geographical regions," MacGowan says. At least 25,000 Nortel employees use UC tools on a daily basis, helping to increase remote workers and curb real estate costs, while at the same time boosting productivity by an estimated 15%. Nortel IT staff estimate they've reduced their communication footprint by 30-65% and have lowered cabling costs by 60 to 75%. "The benefit areas tend to traditionally be focused on technology cost savings, such as rewiring telephony cables," MacGowan starts. "But the focus has to also shift to new value areas." MacGowan points to Denmark's Jyske Bank. In a few short years, it has transformed the dreary, and often dreadful, banking experience into an interactive, efficient and almost pleasant outing through large-scale UC integration. Jyske implemented a Nortel and Microsoft Innovative Communications Alliance project, consisting of the Nortel Communications Server 1000, Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005. This created a unified telephony and IT platform across the bank's 120 branches, with Jyske's 4,000 employees using Nortel IP phones. Managed by the Nortel Communications Server 1000, Microsoft Office Communicator brings all this functionality to the desktop. When clients enter a branch a host at an "AskBar" greets them. By verifying bank representatives' presence information on their laptop screens, hosts are able to connect clients and available bankers quickly through IM or via phone. This eliminates time wasted to physically search for an available representative, and ensures clients aren't waiting outside advisors' offices for them to finish meetings or calls. "We're really just at the beginning of understanding how business processes can be transformed by UC," says MacGowan. "UC is for enterprise what call centre technology is for call centres. That's the real potential of it. It really enables faster responses, faster approvals, faster communications and faster customer service."

Indiana University, Nortel tout cost, operational benefits of unified communications at Toronto event

News | 04/16/2008 2:53 pm EDT

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