As businesses start to look into how to implement Communications Enabled Business Processes – also known as “CEBP” – to save money, they’re also looking at what products will improve business agility, lower capital and operating expenses, and yield higher productivity.

 

Canadian equipment manufacturer Nortel is touting its “Agile (News - Alert) Communication Environment” software, part of the company’s CEBP offerings, as the tool that does all three things.

 

“Our approach with customers is to give them the tools they need to understand how ACE applications can positively impact their business,” said John Bednarek, the leader in alliances and business development for CEBP. “We have an extensive set of ROI calculators that put customers in the driver’s seat and allow them to enter the business parameter that makes sense to them and to test those assumptions by changing the variables.”

 

Nortel (News - Alert) told TMCnet that it recently worked with HSBC to leverage the financial institution’s prior investments in PBX (News - Alert) and video communications by providing integration between multi-vendor communications environments.

 

This integration aspect of the solution helps avoid the challenges and costs inherent in seeking out a single vendor technology on a global scale, Bednarek said. And although specific ROI results from HSBC are confidential, Bednarek said Nortel’s UC solutions deliver “an ROI up to 178 percent, with up to 30 percent savings” on mobile communications.

 

“Our unified communications solution is aimed at joining up the decision makers within our company globally and placing the control and convenience of their personalized communications environment in their hands,” said Tim Cureton, group head of telecommunications at HSBC. “Orienting voice, video and text communications around the user – and not as it was with the user around the technology – is key to operating as one HSBC and increasing our competitive advantage on a traditional scale.”

 

Because ACE software supports multi-vendor interoperability, Nortel is able to quickly and easily develop adaptors for a wide range of PBXs, softswitches and videoconferencing systems.

 

“With ACE, we have built software adaptors into our SOA-based architecture,” Tara Mahoney, the solutions leader in CEBP for Nortel, told TMCnet. “For example, we have adaptors for Cisco (News - Alert) Call Center Manager and Tandberg videoconferencing systems, along with a number of others.”

 

Nortel’s integrations into business operations include Microsoft (News - Alert) OCS, IBM Sametime and CareFX for healthcare applications.

 

“A key part of our strategy is to ensure that customers can leverage their existing investments in infrastructure and applications and take these investments to the next level without having to rip and replace or rewrite applications,” Mahoney told TMCnet. “And our aggressive drive for interoperability will continue as we add more adaptors in the future.”