Cambridgeshire County Council has saved £1.2m over two
years after installingvoice over IP technology.
The savings, which were made by reducing telephone and
travelling expenses, are expected to increase as the council uses
the system to reduce the amount of office space it requires.
The council installed a
converged network including IP telephony software from Avaya to
allow the same level of telephony services for users in offices at
different locations. Previously, different sites in the county were
served by BT and ntl, with service levels varying.
The council is planning to reduce the amount of office space it
uses by allowing employees to hot-desk. It is in the process of
moving workers from multiple locations into a single building, and
extending its VoIP service is expected to make the migration
process easier.
So far, 500 of the council's 4,000-plus staff have migrated from
fixed-line telephony provided by ntl to an in-house VoIP
service.
"We could not achieve flexible working using dedicated numbers
with dedicated phones, which is why the number portability function
of VoIP - where their numbers follow staff regardless of which
workstation they log into - appealed," said Alan Shields, technical
architect at Cambridgeshire County Council.
Shields advised IT managers running a VoIP service in-house not
to underestimate the challenges VoIP presents. "It is not just
plugging phones into PCs. Real-time applications must happen in
real time, and unless you have experience in video conferencing,
you need to understand how to administer quality of service."
The council chose Avaya because of its use of open standards and
because the system integrated well with its existing IT
infrastructure.
"The majority of the products that we run are Microsoft.
Ultimately, we will be looking to converge on this platform with
the addition of presence technology," said Shields.