Organizations have been buying and installing business telephone systems for the better part of 100 years, and for most of those 100 years, it has been a daunting prospect. For organizations spread out all over a multitude of offices and locations – think a university campus – the prospect is even more difficult. In an era when most people expect flexibility in their voice, data and messaging, a fixed, traditional telephone system becomes an expensive boondoggle that will likely cost a staggering amount and fail to meet nearly everyone’s expectations.
For this reason, many organizations, including universities, are turning to VoIP-based phone systems and IP-based unified communications solutions for cost-effective flexibility that allows them to easily route calls, data and messages precisely where they need to go. One such organization is the University of Washington (UW), which until three years ago was coping with a communication infrastructure that was cumbersome and out of date, unable to support more modern communications models such as bring-your-own device (BYOD), video conferencing (which is increasingly important in education) and mobility.
The need was becoming great: UW serves more than 51,000 students and 31,000 faculty members across three campuses and 500 buildings across Seattle, Tacoma and Bothell, Wash., and the university was falling behind when it came to fostering a modern communications infrastructure.
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"The technology did not support many of the systems and applications necessary for today's educational environment, including mobility, BYOD, VoIP and video conferencing," said Roland Rivera, UW's director of network strategy and telecommunications. "Better integration of voice and data services was critical, and it was apparent that there was a need for a unified communications infrastructure."
In addition to modernizing the university’s phone, data and messaging communications, it also hoped to provide seamless connectivity for multiple vendors, including Microsoft Lync, AVST, Cisco and Polycom (News - Alert), across a variety of platforms and devices, including PCs, Macs, tablets, smartphones and conference room video systems. Ultimately, the university turned to an Aura UC solution from Avaya (News - Alert), and has found the flexibility it needs to engage in twenty-first century unified communications with video conferencing and mobile device support.
UW is just one of many organizations today finding that the traditional PBX (News - Alert) system simply doesn’t work anymore, particularly if the organization has any desire to move forward with unified communications. VoIP systems, such those from 8x8 (News - Alert) Inc. and its midmarket and enterprise Virtual Office solution, are complete business phone systems that are designed to be affordable, advanced and flexible, all over an organization’s Internet connection.
In addition to enabling technologies such as video conferencing and mobile device support, these solutions provide features include auto-attendant, corporate directories, voice mail, music-on-hold, conference bridges, ring groups, call forwarding , transfers and more, without the costs and inflexibility inherent in traditional business telephone systems.
Edited by Alisen Downey