A few moments ago Microsoft officially confimed the upcoming release of an update to Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007) further enhancing the functionality of the platform and providing the foundation for replacing your existing PBX infrastructure over time.
We increasingly are seeing our customers seeking to drive down costs associated with day to day operations and enhance the productivity of their workforce - this update to the OCS platform will further help them on the path to achieving this some examples of this being:
- CAPEX/OPEX Benefits:
- Organizations being able to reduce the amount of their travel budgets, replacing air, land and sea travel through the use of video and audio conferencing inherent in the platform.
- Increasing the ability for staff to work remotely (telework) requiring less office infrastructure and physical space - providing the ability to reach a staff member via a number of modalities - including the new single reach functionality on mobile devices.
- With the addition of Dial-in conferencing functionality to the OCS platform, organizations can reduce their reliance on traditional audio conferencing providers whom charge by the minute for these services. Avanade's own internal research has shown that our average audio conference has 2.8 participants of which the majority of them are internal users.
- SIP trunking removes the need to purchase, implement and support gateway infrastructure in branch offices, allowing an organization to focus their investment on other operational areas.
- Organizational Benefits:
- Ability to offer flexible working conditions to employees, allowing remote work, ease of contact when travelling and the same core functionality from multiple connection types.
- Employee's able to identify a co-workers status and quickly make an informed decision about whether to contact them. This ability can be surfaced in a number of different office and line of business applications and can be custom added via the API's provided in the platform.
- Single-number reach will make it easier for customers and co-workers to contact with information workers whatever their connection state might be - with presence and unified messaging allowing the end-user multiple options for those times in which they don't wish to be contacted.
As customers continue to look at how to reduce their costs and enhance the end-user experience - unified communications offers organizations the ability to frame a holistic communications and collaboration strategy that works with the infrastructure enterprises have in place today and allows people to collaborate seamlessly across time zones and devices.
Avanade, through our next generation workplace framework, can help businesses efficiently communicate and collaborate in a way that is cost-effective, easily integrated, and scalable, enabling employees to access and share business-critical information.
A link to the official release can be found here:
www.microsoft.com/presspass