Unified Communications Case Study:
Client: Champion Technologies
UC Project developed by Insource

Champion’s plan was to implement a Unified Communications (UC) solution to improve and enhance their employees’ communications and collaboration capabilities

Background
Champion Technologies, Inc. (Champion) is the fastest growing specialty chemical company offering innovative and environmentally acceptable solutions to oil and gas production problems. They deliver technical solutions that enhance productivity and improve well economics.

As a first step, Champion wanted to evaluate Microsoft’s Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging (UM) and Office Communications Server (OCS) as part of the UC solution. Their IT management asked Insource to design and implement a pilot project to test the Microsoft UM and OCS solutions in real world conditions.

Insource, working with the participation of Microsoft Corporation, developed a two-phased approach to the pilot project. This included the analysis and design of the UM and OCS solutions as Phase I and implementation and integration of the approved design launching the pilot as Phase II.

Champion’s users for this pilot project included members of the Information Systems staff around the world and selected overseas sites that met the necessary requirements.

Insource Approach
Insource, working in close collaboration with Champion management:

• Performed a detailed analysis of Champion’s business needs in relation to UC
• Assessed and analyzed the business and technical requirements, including the IT environment in terms of its readiness for Exchange 2007 UM and OCS
• Determined requirements for integration with existing Champion telephony and mobile solutions
• Developed overall requirements for the Exchange 2007 UM and OCS environments as well as for OWA, Outlook Anywhere, Smartphones, etc.
• Developed requirements for interoperability between existing infrastructure to support migration, as well as interoperability requirements with security systems

The implementation phase entailed the provisioning, ordering, configuration and testing, and rollout of the UC pilot project solution.

UC Benefits For Champion
Champion decided to compare Cisco and Microsoft UC solutions and realized a number of benefits with the Microsoft solution. The Microsoft solution enables Champion to:

• Host Web Conferencing in house
• Rollout VoIP to remote offices with less investment and complexity and more functionality at a faster pace
• Integrate easily with Champion’s existing Cisco VoIP solution
• Implement a standard, secure IM application corporate-wide
• Leverage Exchange UM for Voice Mail and Outlook Voice Access
• Leverage VoIP without the use of WAN or VPN links

Conclusion
Insource, working closely with Champion, has successfully implemented OCS for IT world-wide and specific offices and users around the world. Champion is now able to use Enterprise IM, presence, in house Web Conferencing and VoIP technology, which easily integrates with their existing Cisco VoIP solution. Champion has been very impressed with the Microsoft UC technology performance and has been steadily expanding its usage into additional offices.