[October 17, 2011] LA Fitness Deploys Microsoft Lync Solution Tweet Oct 17, 2011 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) -- LA Fitness announced the companywide rollout of Microsoft Lync 2010 communications software to its 20,000 employees, to improve how employees at the more than 370 clubs across the country interact, share information and provide customer service. "Taking a step forward with a new solution is always a big risk, and this was no exception," said George Bedar, chief information officer at LA Fitness. "But the move to Lync has been extremely well received by executive leadership because, for the first time, our entire company is on the same unified communications solution. This has significantly lowered our costs and made them very predictable and helped drive consistency in our processes, staff training and member experience." As LA Fitness said it expanded across the U.S., the company's telephony solution became increasingly complex. Some clubs were equipped with telephones only, while newer locations brought in VoIP solutions. The result was an inconsistent and unpredictable communication platform. As a result, LA Fitness said it began looking for an enterprise-level communication platform to provide consistency, functionality and reduced costs. The company considered several enterprise-level VoIP solutions before determining that Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 was more cost-effective compared with solutions from other vendors, such as Cisco Systems and Avaya. The initial, limited deployment produced a positive response from its employees that caused LA Fitness to expand the deployment across the entire company on a significantly accelerated schedule. When Microsoft Lync replaced Office Communications Server 2007 R2 several months later, LA Fitness upgraded immediately. ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]