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DiData Deploys For Cairns City Council |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Monday, 29 October 2007 |
Local solutions provider outfit, Dimension
Data has announced the first phase of a three-year
unified communications roll-out was successfully deployed for the Cairns City Council using Microsoft and Cisco solution.
The Council hopes the
new unified communications infrastructure will improve internal
communications and deliver superior service to its
constituents, but so far only a pilot project of 30 users have access
to the new system ahead of a rollout which will number more than 1000
users.
The
initial phase of the project has entailed upgrading the Council's
existing Cisco equipment and deploying cornerstone Cisco, Microsoft and
Dimension Data technologies for unified communications: Cisco CallManager 5,
Microsoft Exchange 2007, Microsoft Identity Integration Server and Dimension
Data's IP telephony - Active Directory (IPAD) Connector. This stage
of the engagement is well underway and Council is currently on track to have
its new infrastructure in place as planned.
Year
one of the project has also seen a number of significant Cisco hardware deployments,
including gateway, email and multimedia router upgrades, and a range of
different Cisco IP handset models.
"Dimension
Data has been proactively involved with Cairns City Council since 2001,
designing, deploying and supporting our Cisco infrastructure. As a result,
Dimension Data has become engaged with our strategic planning and understood
the direction we wished to take in deploying a converged infrastructure,"
said Dennis Littlewood, Manager, IT Infrastructure, Cairns City Council.
The
Council's phone lines have all been re-routed from its existing PABX to
the new Cisco IP PABX, with all Council users provisioned in CallManager. Users
not involved in the pilot have had their IP phone lines forwarded to their
existing handsets, making the upgrade process invisible. The advantage of this
approach is that when the full system is rolled out to these users, it will be a
simple matter of installing a new Cisco IP handset and switching off the call
forwarding. This is expected to take place in stages throughout 2008, once the
system has been fully tested and all users trained.
The solution involves the Dimension Data IPAD -- a unique solution that allows organisations to operate their unified
communications applications through a single directory by integrating the
Microsoft Active Directory and Cisco CallManager environments. This provides a
single point of user administration for functions including replication of user
information (including moves, additions, changes and deletions), mapping of
data fields between the two systems, and scaling to connect additional
directories for a complete identity management system.
"IPAD
provides a single interface for user administration for the Council, across the
entire Microsoft and Cisco IP telephony solution," said Mr Littlewood.
In the
next phase for the Council is the implementation of Cisco Unified Contact
Centre (IPCC), which will enable IVR functionality and intelligent call routing
for the Central Customer Service Centre, Council's IT service desk and
the Civic Theatre's box office (which is run by the Council). It will
also enable advanced functionality including click-to-call and desktop
videoconferencing. The system's ability to route calls to the right staff
member means call handling can be tailored to different classes of customers
(down to the individual level). Calls can be moved in the queue and skill
groups used to define which agents have the required knowledge to deal with a
customer's query quickly and efficiently.
The
move from legacy equipment to a converged network has brought a raft of less
tangible benefits, like improved fault tolerance, the ability to federate with
other councils if desired, and a range of possible future upgrades that can
quickly and easily be deployed to meet future needs, including wireless
connectivity, and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 for instant
messaging and presence.
"We've
been very happy with the improvements to our telephony environment; we're
now looking at upgrading our Contact Centre as well. We've upgraded our
infrastructure to the latest Cisco IP network, so the back-end work has been done,"
Mr Littlewood notes.
"Now,
when we want to add new applications or capabilities, we've got a
platform that will accommodate them."
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