THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM INVESTS IN UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
15/03/2007 One of the UK's most prestigious universities, the University of Nottingham, has extended its relationship with NEC Philips Unified Solutions by commencing a project which is seen as central to the University’s corporate IT development strategy. The new project, which involves the integration of voice and IT communications utilising Microsoft Live Communications Server (LCS), is intended to provide a unified environment for all users to control and manage their communication preferences and availability.
The University of Nottingham, which is regularly ranked among the top ten Higher Education institutions in the UK, had more than 25,000 registered students in 2006, with more than 10 applicants per place. The University was named the Higher Education Institution of the Year in the Times Higher Education awards. University Park Campus is the principal campus of the University and is widely regarded as one of the most attractive in the country. The University now has several further campuses including one in Malaysia and one in China.
There were many issues that led the University to consider Unified Communications (UC) at this stage but the envisaged benefit of improving staff connectivity was considered to be a primary driver. This is particularly important in view of the fact that the University’s staff are spread out across several different UK and overseas campuses. UC will help the University to streamline its business processes by improving the reachability and presence information of staff.
UC is also seen as paving the way for the provision of a cost effective and secure student telephony solution for the university’s 8,000+ overseas or foreign students to communicate with their friends and families in their home countries. Current alternatives are seen as high risk to the security of the university’s network and are consequently restricted.
The University and NEC Philips have had a long standing relationship stretching back over 15 years, during which time the University has deployed a number of communication applications and systems from NEC Philips, including Contact Centre, voicemail and in excess 8,500 end-points across eight sites. This latest project is a further demonstration of the way these two organisations work closely together in developing and deploying new technology for the benefit of the University and consequently other educational establishments.
The initial LCS pilot is connected to three of the University’s sites and is to include telephony control on the desktop for features such as hold, transfer, directory access, conferencing as well as ‘click to dial’ functionality from Microsoft desktop applications.
Andrew Holdgate, Communications Manager at the University of Nottingham, explains, “We and NEC Philips share the same vision about Unified Communications built around LCS, and we recognise it as a major step forward in communications technology which offers clear and justifiable benefits for our organisation. We are very excited about the possibilities and potential of Unified Communications and are pleased with the results we have seen thus far.”
Holdgate continues, “The project we are working on with NEC Philips has the specific aims of facilitating improvements for mobile working in our organisation, as well as enhancing the communications features available to certain users through the optimisation of our existing investments. For example, we have a huge number of analogue and old digital handsets on site and upgrading these users with new handsets would cost a prohibitively large amount of money. The work with NEC Philips is aimed at providing these users with the functionality of an expensive featurephone handset through our existing IT applications on the user’s PC or laptop.”
Commenting on the project with the University of Nottingham, Chris de Silva, UK Managing Director of NEC Philips Unified Communications says, “The University of Nottingham is a long-standing customer and partner of NEC Philips. Both organisation believe strongly in UC as a strategic driver for the future of communications. The University is determined to maximise the value of its technology infrastructure by using UC for the benefit of all of its students and staff. This far-sighted initiative will drive these benefits throughout the organisation providing an excellent return on investment and reaffirming Nottingham as a leader in innovation at all levels.”
The University has also recently invested in an IP voice server from NEC Philips, in the form of the UNIVERGE SV7000 with particular consideration to connecting small out stations and remote sites cost effectively. The NEC Philips UNIVERGE SV7000 is also seen as a key element within the University’s business continuity strategy, providing an additional element of protection and resilience to the existing voice infrastructure, further protecting the University’s long term investment.