Microsoft Office SystemCustomer Solution Case Study

IT Services Company Improves Productivity by 20 Percent with Unified Communications

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: IT services

Customer ProfileHeadquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, UST Global is a leading provider of end-to-end IT services and solutions for Global 1000 companies. UST Global employs 7,000 workers around the world.

Business SituationUST Global wanted to provide its employees with more instant, fully integrated communication capabilities.

SolutionUST Global deployed a Microsoft Unified Communications solution to offer employees integrated communication capabilities, including presence, instant messaging, voice, and audio, video, and web conferencing.

Benefits Improved productivity by 20

percent Reduced costs

“The one-click capability to initiate a chat, audio, or video call provides tremendous value for us.”

Murali Gopalan, CIO, UST GlobalUST Global provides end-to-end IT services and solutions for Global 2000 companies. It has 7,000 employees working in offices across North America, Europe, and Asia. The company delivers pragmatic IT solutions that help its customers achieve their most critical business objectives. Employees were relying on a mix of services to connect with their colleagues and customers, but the company wanted its consultants to have the most up-to-date, accessible communications network available to communicate with its customers. UST Global decided to implement a Microsoft Unified Communications solution to provide capabilities—such as presence, instant messaging, voice, and conferencing. It expects to reduce costs while improving productivity up to 20 percent and providing a widely accessible communications network so that employees can connect to customers anywhere, anytime.

SituationHeadquartered in California, UST Global is an IT services provider focused on the Global 2000 market. Its industries include healthcare, insurance, retail, financial services, manufacturing, entertainment, and utilities and energy. UST Global employees provide services including application development and maintenance, quality assurance and testing, infrastructure services, business intelligence, and data management, among many others. The company’s primary goal is to build long-lasting, strategic relationships with its customers, helping them to achieve their critical business objectives.

As a company with customers worldwide, UST Global understands that communication between employees, their home offices, and their colleagues in the field is critical. For voice communication, UST Global was relying primarily on a Cisco IP private-branch exchange (PBX) system to provide voice over IP (VoIP) telephony and traditional analog services. Offices were equipped with hard-wired VoIP phones. With one phone for every four employees, scheduling time to make phone calls was an issue. For instant messaging, UST Global had deployed Jabber from Cisco, but the lack of presence information integrated with other applications, such as the Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 messaging and collaboration client, meant that employees had to switch between applications to

get questions answered quickly. Employees used WebEx for web conferencing, and for video conferencing, they had to use equipment available only in special rooms at the main office, which often resulted in scheduling conflicts and also meant that it was difficult to schedule conferences quickly.While UST Global wanted to provide employees with better access to telephony services when they were in the office, adding endpoints and hardware for the VoIP lines did not address all the issues. Mobile and long distance charges would continue to add up due to the number of employees relying on mobile phones as their primary communication because of travel and time spent at customer sites.

Over the last few years, the company has expanded rapidly, adding new locations and new employees. UST Global needed a system that was more scalable—and more affordable. With the current system, it was too expensive to add hardware at new locations and to add new users at existing locations. The company also wanted to provide more conferencing options, not only to reduce travel but to provide customers with the instant communication they expect. Finally, it wanted a communications solution that would integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Exchange Server email messaging and collaboration software and the

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“We estimate that employee productivity has improved by about 20 percent, simply because employees use instant messaging and voice more frequently than email.”

Sam Felix, Infrastructure Consultant, UST Global

Microsoft Office business productivity suite.

SolutionTo provide a more comprehensive communications solution, UST Global decided to deploy a Microsoft Unified Communications solution. This solution was selected because it would be easy to incorporate into the current environment that already included Active Directory, Exchange Server, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. The solution would also be easy to scale as UST Global added more locations and employees, and it offered all the capabilities its employees required: voice, instant messaging, presence, and conferencing. In addition, it interoperates with Outlook and SharePoint Server, so employees could see presence information and easily click to call available colleagues. UST Global also appreciated that Microsoft had a well-defined road map for its unified communications solution. “We really liked the idea that all of the capabilities we wanted were available in a single client,” explains Sam Felix, Infrastructure Consultant at UST Global, “especially one that would fit seamlessly with our current Microsoft operating systems and messaging environment.”

Working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Dell, UST Global began the rollout of its unified communications solution in April

2010. At a central data center in Tiruvananthapuram, India, UST Global deployed Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (now known as Microsoft Lync Server 2010), using mediation servers to route calls through Office Communications Server to connect to the public-switched telephone network (PSTN) through the Cisco IP PBX. In the current implementation, all calls are routed through the United States. “This solution provides seamless integration between Cisco Call Manager and Office Communicator. Our employees don’t feel that we have two separate systems for communication,” explains Murali Gopalan, CIO at UST Global,

Hosting the solution in one main data center increases the scalability of the solution and simplifies management for the IT team. All employees can use the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 client to make voice calls, send instant messages, or start conferences from their desktops. The deployment was completed in June 2010, and all 7,000 employees were enabled for instant messaging, presence, and voice, as well as audio and video conferencing. Going forward, UST Global will consider adding more mediation servers to route calls locally at more locations. For the time being, it will keep some PBX systems and some of its Cisco conferencing solutions, but it plans

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to retire these systems in the future.

Most UST Global employees will use Office Communicator on their portable computers—with soft phones or headsets for placing voice calls—but if they need to work away from the office and do not have access to their computers, UST Global also implemented Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access, so employees can send instant messages, place VoIP calls, or join conferences from any computer that has an Internet connection and a browser. UST Global has enabled all capabilities for Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile as well, so employees can also use the client on their mobile phones to send messages or view presence information.

To train employees on how to use the new solution, UST Global offered live demonstrations at its offices, as well as video sessions to train employees who could not attend, or for employees who wanted to revisit the demonstrations. UST Global also sent out newsletters describing the capabilities and best practices for using them.

Employees are impressed with the range of capabilities and are finding the familiar interface easy to use. They especially appreciated the presence capability because they can see it through Office Communicator or Outlook, making

it easy to locate colleagues and see the best way to contact them. Another popular feature is Microsoft Office Live Meeting, which employees use to conduct online meetings and collaborate with colleagues. UST Global has also enabled federation, so employees can place Communicator calls, share a desktop, start an instant messaging session, or view presence and calendar information for any other federation-enabled organization in its network. Help-desk employees use the instant messaging and desktop sharing capabilities to troubleshoot issues.

UST Global plans to transition other communications services, such as web conferencing, to Office Communications Server. Employees will continue to use WebEx to hold web conferences, but only the meeting host will have to join through WebEx: all others will join through Communicator. Another capability it plans to implement is Exchange Server 2010 Unified Messaging, allowing employees to manage their voice mail through Office Outlook. They will view voice messages directly in their inboxes, where they can respond to messages through email or view a caller’s presence information and return the call immediately with one click. The company will also consider implementing the group chat feature. It allows employees to join and leave instant messaging sessions as needed, and it provides

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“Our company is expanding at a rapid pace. With Office Communications Server, we have a scalable solution that helps us add users or new office locations without additional hardware and IT support costs.”

Sam Felix, Infrastructure Consultant, UST Global

“We have a geographically dispersed workforce, and Office Communications Server helps bring them together. It’s all about teamwork.”

Sam Felix, Infrastructure Consultant, UST Global

a record of the session for participants to review.

BenefitsBy deploying a Microsoft Unified Communications solution and taking advantage of hosted services, UST Global has reduced costs while providing its employees with the latest technologies to keep them productive and satisfied. Using the VoIP, instant messaging, presence, and conferencing capabilities of Office Communications Server, UST Global has increased productivity, reduced costs, and helped improve collaboration by providing more possibilities for instant communication from any location.

Improved Productivity by 20 PercentUST Global employees increased their productive time at work. With direct access to voice through Office Communications Server, employees no longer share phone lines in the office. With video conferencing capabilities available from their desktops, employees also no longer have to spend time trying to schedule special conference rooms or block out hours to meet with colleagues and customers. They can simply view the presence of the person they want to contact and start a conference call immediately. “The one-click capability to initiate a chat, audio, or video call provides tremendous value for us,” explains Mr. Gopalan. “Since 30 percent of

our population is new at any given time, the ability to type someone’s name and immediately begin a conversation is a great feature.”

Employees are also taking advantage of instant communication to save time. “We estimate that employee productivity has improved by about 20 percent, simply because employees use instant messaging and voice more frequently than email,” says Mr. Felix. With a workforce spread across multiple geographical locations around the world, the ability to view presence and interact with colleagues immediately means that employees can get their questions answered and meet deadlines more effectively than if they had to wait for someone to return an email or a phone call.With Communicator Mobile and Communicator Web Access, employees can also connect more easily when they have to be out of the office for meetings or traveling to customer sites. “With Communicator Mobile and Communicator Web Access, people can more easily join conferences or collaborate with people back at the office, no matter where they are,” explains Mr. Felix.

Reduced CostsWith the deployment of Office Communications Server, UST Global has reduced or avoided costs several ways. “Our company is expanding at a rapid pace,”

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explains Mr. Felix. “With Office Communications Server, we have a scalable solution that helps us add users or new office locations without additional hardware and IT support costs.” UST Global also provided all employees with voice capabilities without paying for additional VoIP hardware or installing additional endpoints to ensure that everyone has a phone.

With Communicator Mobile and Communicator Web Access, UST Global also reduces long distance and mobile phone charges. Since most employees take their portable computers with them when they are out of the office, having contact options other than their mobile phones helps to keep costs down.

Improved CollaborationIn addition to the productivity benefits, UST Global has also experienced an improvement in collaboration between its teams around the world. “We have a geographically dispersed workforce, and Office Communications Server helps bring them together,” says Mr. Felix. “It’s all about teamwork.”

Presence information makes it easier for employees to collaborate with one another across distances, and desktop sharing has made it easier for people to share important information instantly, rather than sending attachments through email or having to upload documents to a shared location and wait for a review. “We are using Live Meeting to hold conferences between multiple parties, including our vendors and partners,” adds Mr. Gopalan. “Online meetings help our teams to work together, and with Office Communications Server, they are easy to schedule through Outlook or initiate from a chat or conversation when needed.”Microsoft Office SystemThe Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to: www.microsoft.com/office

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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 Dell products and services, call (800) WWW-DELL or visit the website at: www.dell.com

For more information about UST Global products and services, call (949) 716-8757 or visit the website at: www.ust-global.com

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

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Software and Services Microsoft Office

− Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2

− Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2

− Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft Exchange Server

2010− Microsoft Lync Server 2010− Microsoft SharePoint Server

2010 Technologies

− Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access

Partners Dell