Aircraft manufacturer Airbus is migrating to an IP
telephony system for 40,000 of its users across three sites in the
UK and France.
The system will help it to cut costs, scale up the business to
deal with rapid growth, meet security and resilience requirements
and help dispersed staff to work more collaboratively.
The Cisco IP telephony system will be implemented by France
Telecom's subsidiary Equant as part of a five-year deal.
Airbus will migrate from traditional private-branch exchanges to
a fully IP-based telephony system for 30,000 extensions at its
Toulouse sites, and 10,000 extensions in the UK, at sites in Filton
and Broughton.
Cisco will provide 40,000 IP telephone handsets and Cisco
Callmanager call-processing software to cover all the sites. France
Telecom in France and Equant in the UK will provide integration
services, including support services with dedicated on-site teams
working on the migration.
Airbus said it would gain savings from cheaper calls, and would
no longer require a team of engineers to move employee extensions,
or set new phone numbers each time they move sites.
The IT suppliers involved said the new system will help Airbus
to realise a number of efficiencies.
"The convergence of all business communications brings about
huge benefits: greater return on investment through reduced network
and administration costs; improved productivity from end-users and
the IT department; and new, high value customer care and
productivity applications," said Barbara Dalibard, executive
vice-president of France Telecom Enterprise Communication
Services.