Microsoft Lync Server 2010Customer Solution Case Study

Telecom Firm Reduces Costs and Eases Administration with Communications Solution

OverviewCountry or Region: FranceIndustry: Telecommunications

Customer ProfileBouygues Telecom is a leading mobile communications service provider in France with 10.721 million mobile customers. Headquartered in Paris, the company employs 9,000 people and operates 620 club stores.

Business SituationBouygues Telecom wanted to expand its Microsoft enterprise voice solution for more employees and retire its private branch exchange telephony solution.

SolutionBouygues Telecom decided to deploy Microsoft Lync Server 2010 to upgrade its Microsoft communications solution and provide enterprise voice for more employees, in addition to providing a highly available solution that would be easier to manage.

Benefits Eased management Reduced costs Improved productivity

“As more of our employees use the voice capabilities in Lync Server, they reduce their need for traditional desk phones, which will allow us eventually to retire our PBX systems.”

Jean Paul Freitas, System Engineer, Bouygues Telecom

Bouygues Telecom, part of the Bouygues Group, is a mobile phone and Internet service provider. Headquartered in Paris, France, the company employs 9,000 workers and provides service for 10.721 million mobile customers. In 2009, the company deployed a Microsoft communications solution to provide presence, instant messaging, conferencing, and enterprise voice capabilities to boost productivity and help employees improve collaboration. More recently, the company decided to upgrade its communications solution by deploying Microsoft Lync Server 2010. Bouygues Telecom found that Lync Server 2010 could help it to retire its previous voice system, reduce its environmental impact, and simplify administration. In addition, employees would continue to boost their productivity and save valuable time.

SituationCreated in 1994, Bouygues Telecom has 10,721,000 mobile customers and 645,000 fixed-line customers. Bouygues Telecom is committed to continually enhancing the customer experience for its mobile and fixed telephone, TV, and Internet services. Each day, the company’s 9,000 employees develop solutions aligned with changing customer needs and deliver efficient support.

To simplify internal communications and help employees collaborate more efficiently, Bouygues Telecom deployed Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. With presence and instant messaging capabilities, employees could communicate better in real time and were able to reduce unnecessary email messages. For 6,000 employees, the company also enabled enterprise voice so that employees could place and receive calls through their laptop computers as long as they were connected to a broadband connection.

Bouygues Telecom deployed Office Communications Server at its main data center, with two front end servers, two Mediation servers, a Microsoft SQL Server for the backend, and a Monitoring server. In addition, it deployed an Edge server so that employees could more easily hold audio and web conferences with federated colleagues. To connect Office Communications Server to the public-switched telephone network (PSTN) through its private-branch exchange (PBX) system, it used two NET gateways.

For messaging, Bouygues Telecom had implemented Microsoft Exchange Server

2007. To provide voice mail for its enterprise voice users, the company also deployed Exchange Server Unified Messaging, so that employees can retrieve their voice messages from their Microsoft Office Outlook messaging and collaboration client. Because of the interoperation between Exchange Server and Office Communications Server, employees can also view real-time presence information through Office Outlook and start instant messaging sessions or place calls to available colleagues. Bouygues Telecom also used the application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate presence information into its corporate directory on its intranet site.

With its Office Communications Server 2007 R2 deployment, the company found it was able to reduce travel for employees and support its initiative to reduce its carbon footprint. To help strengthen this commitment, Bouygues Telecom was interested in expanding its enterprise voice deployment. It also wanted a solution that could help it retire its aging PBX systems. To meet these goals, Bouygues decided to deploy a pilot of Microsoft Lync Server 2010. Lync Server provides enhanced versions of the communications capabilities provided by Office Communications Server 2007 R2—presence, instant messaging, robust conferencing, and enterprise voice—as well as improvements in topology, deployment, and management tools.

SolutionAfter running a pilot of Lync Server 2010, Bouygues Telecom decided to deploy the solution to all of its employees who are currently using Office Communications

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Server 2007 R2. In addition, it will expand its enterprise voice deployment to 8,000 employees. The deployment at Bouygues Telecom will also serve as a pilot for other organizations in its parent company, Bouygues Group, to decide whether they also want to deploy the solution. In total, Bouygues Group has approximately 133,000 employees.

Bouygues Telecom will deploy Lync Server at its main data center, but it will take advantage of the more flexible architecture by deploying some of the servers on virtual machines to reduce the amount of hardware in its deployment. It will deploy its two front-end servers and two Monitoring servers on a virtual machine for high availability, and it will keep its Edge server and SQL Server on physical machines. By using media bypass technology developed for Lync Server 2010, Bouygues Telecom can connect Lync Server to the PBX directly through its NET media gateways. Eventually, it would like to connect Lync Server directly to the PSTN and retire its PBX system.

The IT team plans to take advantage of the enhanced deployment and management capabilities in Lync Server as well. With the Topology Builder, application engineers can quickly define all the parameters required to design a new installation. Topology Builder then communicates with the servers to install the correct configuration. For administrators, the Windows PowerShell command-line interface provides more flexible options for managing Lync Server. Administrators can easily automate repetitive tasks, or add or edit user settings for groups. The IT team will also use role-based access control to delegate roles for

IT staff and help desk operators who need to perform different tasks. Finally, all IT and help desk staff can use the web-based management console to manage Lync Server through a browser on any computer with a broadband connection.

Bouygues Telecom will also rely on the Monitoring server for auditing and reporting. The Monitoring server collects call detail reports (CDRs); usage information related to VoIP calls; IM messages, audio and video conversations, meetings, application sharing, and file transfers; numerical data describing the media quality on the network and endpoints; and call error and troubleshooting information for failed calls.With Microsoft Lync 2010 on the desktop, employees have a unified client interface for presence information, instant messaging, and ad hoc collaboration and online meetings. People can join a conference with a single click, and the participation announcement shows everyone who has joined the call. They can also share a desktop or an application, or use the whiteboard feature for more interactive brainstorming sessions. With the Activity Feed, employees can provide additional presence information for their coworkers and federated colleagues.

In the near future, Bouygues Telecom plans to extend Lync Server capabilities through the organization a number of ways. In addition to integrating presence into its corporate directory, the company plans to use the APIs in Lync Server to integrate enterprise voice, so that people can call contacts directly from the directory. It will also upgrade to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

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“We like the fact that we can provide better redundancy for users while we also reduce the number of servers we need to run the solution.”

Jean Paul Freitas, System Engineer, Bouygues Telecom

to take advantage of additional interoperational features. With Exchange Server 2010 Unified Messaging and Lync Server, employees can view their voice mail through a tab in the Lync 2010 client. They can also search for subject matter experts by skill through the Lync client or through SharePoint Server 2010 using the Skill Search feature. Finally, the company plans to connect Lync Server to its Polycom video conferencing system, so that employees can use video conferencing in its larger video meeting rooms and further reduce the need for travel.

BenefitsBy deploying Lync Server 2010, Bouygues Telecom can extend many of the benefits it experienced with Office Communications Server 2007 R2, while also expanding its enterprise voice deployment and taking advantage of architecture improvements to help ease administration and reduce costs. Eased AdministrationWith the more flexible architecture of Lync Server, Bouygues Telecom can tailor its deployment to reduce the number of servers, which also makes it easier to manage. “We like the fact that we can provide better redundancy for users while we also reduce the number of servers we need to run the solution,” says Jean Paul Freitas, System Engineer at Bouygues Telecom.

In addition to having fewer servers to manage, IT administrators also have more options for delegating and automating tasks. With the Windows PowerShell command-line interface, they can add or edit multiple user accounts easily, or create scripts to automate regular maintenance

tasks. “We especially like the role-based access control feature,” says Freitas. “It will be much easier for us to set roles for different teams and delegate tasks.”

Reduced CostsBy deploying Lync Server, Bouygues Telecom can reduce or avoid costs a number of ways. With the reduction of hardware in its deployment, it can repurpose the servers it no longer needs for other uses, which helps it to avoid spending money for additional servers for other applications. With fewer machines in its deployment, it can also reduce its energy costs and continue to reduce its environmental impact.

“As more of our employees use the voice capabilities in Lync Server, they reduce their need for traditional desk phones, which will allow us eventually to retire our PBX systems,” says Freitas. With more employees placing calls through the Lync client, the company can reduce toll charges and long distance charges. As it retires its PBX systems, it will also eliminate maintenance charges.

Improved ProductivityAt Bouygues Telecom, employees will continue to benefit from many of the capabilities that helped them to boost productivity with the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 deployment. However, the unified Lync client offers some additional time-saving benefits. “Our employees frequently use web conferencing, and with Lync they no longer have to switch applications,” says Freitas. With the integration of voice capabilities in the corporate directory, employees will have even more options for

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“Our employees frequently use web conferencing, and with Lync they no longer have to switch applications.”

Jean Paul Freitas, System Engineer, Bouygues Telecom

connecting with contacts, and with the information in the Activity Feed, they can see who is truly available.

With Lync Server, Bouygues Telecom has laid a foundation to provide even more capabilities to its employees as it upgrades to Exchange Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010. It can take advantage of the interoperation between the server products to help employees be even more productive in the future.Microsoft Lync Server 2010Microsoft Lync Server 2010 ushers in a new connected user experience that transforms every communication into an interaction that is more collaborative, and engaging; and that is accessible from anywhere. For IT, the benefits are equally powerful, with a highly secure and reliable communications system that works with existing tools and systems for easier management, lower cost of ownership, smoother deployment and migration, and greater choice and flexibility.

For more information about Microsoft Lync Server 2010, go to: www.microsoft.com/lync

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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.com

For more information about Bouygues Telecom products and services, visit the website at:www.bouyguestelecom.fr

For more information about Jabra products and services, call (800) 826-4656 or visit the website at: www.jabra.com

For more information about NET products and services, call (800) 234-4638 or visit the website at: www.net.com

For more information about Polycom products and services, call (800) Polycom or visit the website at: www.polycom.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published April 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft Lync Server 2010− Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Enterprise Edition− Microsoft Exchange Server 2010− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Microsoft Office− Microsoft Lync 2010− Microsoft Office Communications

Server 2007 R2− Microsoft Office Communicator 2007

R2