Metia CEP Belgacom Goes Green, Reducing Footprint and Costs with Unified Communications Solutio

Microsoft Office System

Customer Solution Case Study

Belgacom Goes Green, Reducing Costs and Carbon Footprint with Unified Communications

Overview

Country or Region: Belgium

Industry: Telecommunications

Customer Profile

Belgium’s leading telecommunications network service provider Belgacom offers traditional fixed-line, mobile, TV, and internet services to consumers and businesses in Belgium.

Business Situation

Belgacom wanted to use integrated communications to improve collaboration between staff, support the company’s carbon reduction strategy, and make it easier to work with offshore partners.

Solution

Microsoft worked with HP to introduce unified communications using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

Benefits

Carbon reduction targets met

Teamwork enhanced

Collaboration with offshore partners improved

Access to videoconferencing widened

“With access to videoconferencing, our staff will travel less. If our European companies replace only 20 per cent of their trips with videoconferences, we would cut carbon emissions by more than 22 million tons a year.”

Eric Opitom, Office Automation Domain Manager, Belgacom Group

As Belgium’s leading provider of integrated telecommunications services, Belgacom Group needed a way to further evolve communications among newly integrated divisions, efficiently hire and train offshore support staff, and continue to reduce its carbon footprint. Belgacom worked with Microsoft and HP to deliver a single, unified communications solution offering real-time communications to its employees and offshore partners. The solution—based on Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 for voice, instant messaging, audio, web, and videoconferencing, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 for email—is being deployed to more than 16,000 staff. Belgacom is already experiencing improved employee processes, greater security, and reduced carbon emissions—and has cut the time it takes to get consultants on board.

Situation

The Brussels-based telecommunications network service provider Belgacom Group offers traditional fixed-line and mobile services such as voice, data, TV, and internet to consumers and businesses. Belgacom, with annual revenue of €6.1 billion (U.S.$7.8 billion) in 2009, delivers a range of corporate IT services through its Telindus subsidiary.

(“Belgacom has put major emphasis on all aspects of environmental sustainability—the Belgacom Going Green strategy. We want to encourage our employees as well as our customers to contribute by offering them innovative services.” Guy Brusselmans, Senior IT Architect, Belgacom Group )

In 2009, it integrated the various divisions in the group and changed its way of working. Belgacom Group Chairman Theo Dilissen describes this convergence strategy as changing from, “engineers providing networks, to a coordinated group offering a complex array of services.” Part of the culture shift involved the proposed adoption of an integrated communications approach to explore the business value of instant messaging, presence awareness, and voice-over-IP (VoIP) conferencing for thousands of employees and teleworkers.

Belgacom also wanted to use Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for internal communications. SIP helps users to switch easily between channels of communication so they can always choose the appropriate mode—whether data, voice, or video—for their situation.

In addition, Belgacom wanted to further expand its outsourcing resources with its partners in India. Guy Brusselmans, Senior IT Architect, Belgacom Group, says: “Prior to considering the use of unified communications, we would interview and select our consultants in India. It generally took eight weeks from the time they were hired before they physically reached Belgium to be trained. We calculated that we could bridge this gap by conducting training online, including recordings for online replay.”

Finally, introducing integrated communications would fit perfectly with the Belgacom climate-change strategy. The corporate plan includes lowering the organisation’s carbon footprint by 70 per cent by 2020 compared to 2007, and raising Belgacom partners’ awareness of environmental sustainability.

Eric Opitom, Office Automation Domain Manager, Belgacom Group, says: “With access to videoconferencing, our staff will travel less. If our European companies replace only 20 per cent of their trips with videoconferences, we would cut carbon emissions by more than 22 million tons a year.”

Solution

At the end of 2009, Microsoft partnered with HP, initiating the pilot phase of the Microsoft unified communications suite to 100 Belgacom employees. It was implemented using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Edge Server.

The pilot project was being used to show how standardising on SIP, and using audio and videoconferencing through the desktop, could improve productivity and support interviewing and training of recruits from offshore partners.

Microsoft had previously been involved with Belgacom in its office automation project to design the One Office solution for its employees. It included introducing Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 for enterprise messaging and calendaring and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 collaboration technology.

Under its Microsoft Services Enterprise Agreement for low-cost volume licensing of software, Belgacom already had the necessary licences for Office Communications Server 2007 R2, which would help to avoid unnecessary capital expenditure. Ilse Van Criekinge, Unified Communications Technology Advisor, Microsoft, says: “Belgacom was smart to simply ‘turn on’ the technology it had already licensed through HP.”

HP was already onsite at Belgacom working as its voice certified partner. It had closely collaborated with Microsoft to provide the technology services necessary to deploy the unified communications solution. The initial scope of the HP project included architecture design review, proof of concept, and the first phase of rollout, which was subsequently extended to support the full deployment.

(“HP is one of our largest unified communications and collaboration partners. Our alliance makes it easy for customers to get a fast return on their investment.” Patrick Van Asch, Unified Communications Solution Sales Advisor for Microsoft)Patrick Van Asch, Unified Communications Solution Sales Advisor for Microsoft, says: “HP is one of our largest unified communications and collaboration partners. Our alliance makes it easy for customers to get a fast return on their investment.”

HP has worked with Belgacom to produce a design to ensure tight security around features such as desktop sharing. With Office Communicator 2007 R2, a participant in a conference can display his or her entire computer desktop to the other participants.

Brusselmans says: “This complex work took a little longer than originally anticipated, but HP designed the security solution successfully and we’re very satisfied with the result. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 integrated easily with our existing office automation suite of tools.”

Opitom says: “We are deploying Microsoft Office Live Meeting with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to around 6,000 people for external videoconferencing and internal training. And we’re in the final stages of deploying Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 for audio, web, instant messaging, presence and internal videoconferencing for the whole group.”

Benefits

The integrated communications project is part of a series of initiatives that will support the Belgacom company-wide strategy of “Belgacom Going Green.” The new collaboration toolset will significantly lower carbon emissions through less travel and introduce new efficiencies for home-based staff engaged in teleworking. It will also help with offshore hiring and training efforts and improve collaboration.

Reduced Travel Helps Meet Ambitious Climate-Change Targets

The reduced need for travel between sites for meetings and better support for home working will contribute to the Belgacom target of lowering its carbon footprint by 70 per cent by 2020. With the ability to host web conferences onsite with Office Communications Server 2007 R2, use will expand, resulting in further savings.

Brusselmans says: “In the past year, Belgacom has put an emphasis on all aspects of environmental sustainability—the Belgacom Going Green strategy. We want to encourage our employees as well as our customers to contribute by offering them innovative services such as videoconferencing.”

Real-Time Communications Improve Teamwork

Belgacom employees are benefiting from real-time communication with the new technology, making it easier for geographically dispersed teams to collaborate.

Employees will have access to Plantronics and Polycom devices, and Belgacom VoIP services to connect their computers for phone conversations. They can use these tools both within and outside the corporate infrastructure, just as they could with their desk phones.

Streamlining communications between users with Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 messaging and collaboration client lets users communicate with a single click of a mouse. They can instantly see whether colleagues are available using presence and the best way to contact them—by phone, instant messaging, email, or videoconference. Presence information is integrated with Exchange Server 2007 and Office Outlook 2007, which will help identify when users are busy, in meetings, or out of the office. Users connect and communicate from the familiar applications they already use everyday.

Easier and More Flexible Working with Offshore Partners

A key business priority to help the company reduce costs was to investigate how working with offshore partners in India could be made easier. Brusselmans says: “Although we’ve yet to fully extend unified communications to our partners in India, the pilot project indicated that remote training will reduce the time it takes to get a consultant on board.”

Philippe Vermoens, Team Manager at Belgacom, who works with offshore teams, says: “We’ve had our first videoconference with HP Enterprise Services in India and the global experience was great. The video and audio were of high quality. We’ve also tried the whiteboard, desktop sharing, and some other features, and they all worked well.”

Employees Access Conferencing Features

Multiparty audio, web, and videoconferencing will soon be universally available from the desktop for Belgacom employees with Office Communications Server 2007 R2. More than 16,000 employees will be connected to use internal videoconferencing from their desktops.

(Software and ServicesMicrosoft OfficeMicrosoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007Microsoft Server Product PortfolioMicrosoft Exchange Server 2007Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007)Setting up conference calls is easy in Office Outlook 2007, and additional users are added with the drag-and-drop feature. The technology also identifies all the people taking part in a meeting by creating personal identification numbers for participants, thereby avoiding the need to roll call as people join the conference.

Michel Declercq, Account Technology Strategist, Microsoft, says: “Simplicity was a principal reason for Belgacom to adopt universal audio conferencing tools for its employees. It will make staff meetings easier and cut the need for travel. By using Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Edge Server, external participants and remote users will join audio, web, or videoconferences easily.”

Opitom adds: “We will also use these tools to interview potential new staff in offshore locations, and for other scenarios, including remote training and learning.”

(This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published October 2010) (For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.comFor more information about HP Enterprise Services products and services, call or visit the website at:www.hp.comFor more information about Belgacom products and services, call or visit the website at:www.belgacom.com)Microsoft Office System

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