Reuters has installed an IP network in its new London
headquarters that will allow staff to make voice over IP calls
while moving around the office environment.
Staff at the business information and news provider will also
benefit from a unified messaging system, integrating their voice
and e-mail messages, when they move to the firm's new offices in
Canary Wharf over the summer.
The secure Cisco-based system, which carries data, voice and
video, was designed by Affiniti, a communications integrator
created from the merger of Kingston Communications Business
Services, Omnetica and Technica. It supports 3,000 users and is
part of Reuters' Fast Forward business transformation
programme.
Steve Burke, IT workstream head for the project, said, "We now
have a fully integrated, high-performance, flexible infrastructure
that will underpin our business requirements now and in the
future.
"Reuters is looking to adopt IP telephony as a global standard,
using this migration as a template for future deployments."
Wireless roaming using IP phones allows staff to work anywhere
in the building, encouraging a more integrated working culture,
said Burke. Unified messaging lets staff pick up voice and e-mail
messages from the same place and access a global employee directory
of 16,000 staff from their IP handsets.
Affiniti will support the infrastructure with on-site engineers
and remote monitoring.
The network could provide an important boost to Reuters' IT
credibility. Last October, financial firms in Europe were left
without key data on market prices for 10 hours after a power
failure in one of Reuter's datacentres.
And in 2002 Reuters suffered an embarrassing IT failure when
about half of its information terminals, which supply vital
financial data to stock markets around the world, went down.