How Much Can Your Business Really Save?
With
Microsoft Unified Communications businesses can simplify management
and maximize budget and resources. You can consolidate costly
third-party solutions and avoid capital investments. Here’s how
it works:
Reduce Travel Expenses (Potential savings of up to 40%*). Travel
expenses are lowered by replacing in-person meetings with immersive
Web and
video conferencing.
Reduce Telephony and Audio Conferencing Charges (Potential savings
of up to 40%*). Built-in VoIP and unified conferencing capabilities
help lower long-distance charges and audio conferencing
minutes.
Lower Real Estate and Facility Costs (Potential savings of up to
40%*). Replace underutilized video conferencing rooms by extending
desktop-based unified conferencing and reduce office space per
employee with remote working.
Lower Messaging and Voice Mail Costs (Potential savings of up to
40%*). Exchange Server 2010 offers a low-cost storage option and
allows consolidation of costly third-party solutions like mobility,
security, voice mail, and more.
Reduce Cost of Communications Systems (Potential savings of up to
50%*). Office Communications Server 2007 R2 does away with the need
for expensive PBX, instant messaging, and audio/video/Web
conferencing systems.
Smart Decisions for Extraordinary Times
Challenging economic times present extraordinary opportunities. But
taking advantage of those opportunities means making bold business
decisions that go beyond simply cutting back and continuing with
business-as-usual. Historically, businesses that have weathered
down economies and come out on top have not only reduced operating
expenses and avoided new capital expenditures, they have invested
saved cash in ways that positively transformed their
business.
Microsoft® software-powered Unified Communications can help you
cut costs and better position your business for the economic
rebound by transforming the way you communicate and collaborate
while maximizing your existing communications infrastructure.
Businesses can reduce out-of-
pocket expenses by reducing travel expenses and conferencing
service charges with unified conferencing, and you can cut
telephone tolls and cell phone charges with software-powered VoIP.
Unified Communications enables you to avoid capital expenditures by
optimizing your communications infrastructure, including
consolidating messaging, telephony, and voice mail systems and by
eliminating expensive storage systems.
Breaking Down Communication Silos
As communications technologies have evolved over the years, they
have done so independently, in parallel with one another, creating
disparate communications silos.
These silos have led to redundancies and inefficiencies for both
the end user and the administrator. End users are forced to juggle
multiple user-names and passwords to access different
communications services, while administrators must manage redundant
communications environments for e-mail, voice mail, telephony,
conferencing, and instant messaging.
Unified Communications breaks the silos to reduce costs and
communication overload and bring together globally distributed
employees, customers, and partners. By integrating e-mail,
telephony, instant messaging, voice mail, calendaring, and
audio/video/Web conferencing, it’s easier and more cost-effective
than ever to collaborate.
Putting People at the Center Unified Communications reduces
complexity by putting people at the center of the communications
experience.
All of the ways in which people contact one another are integrated
into a single environment, using a single identity and
presence that spans phones, PCs, and Web. This way, you can use
software to transcend geographic boundaries so you can stay
connected with team members and partners no matter what device
you’re using, and no matter where you are. You can communicate in
real time, from your office PC or on mobile devices while on the
road, in a security-enhanced environment.
*Based on sample customers and “Total Economic Impact™ of
Microsoft Unified Communications” white paper issued by Forrester
Research. Visit http://www.microsoft.com/uc/ to learn more.
Rather than requiring businesses to invest in expensive, redundant
infrastructures, unified communications brings all forms of
communications together through software to provide more effective
collaboration at a lower cost. Microsoft is able to deliver these
capabilities by way of Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 and
Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2, which make up the
cornerstone of the Microsoft Unified
Communications solution.
Microsoft Unified Communications Can Help You:
Streamline Communications Between People and Organizations.
Presence enables real-time status of employees (based on calendar
information, login/activity status, and user preference) to be
displayed across the organization. Workers can contact the right
person the first time using the most
appropriate communication method. They can communicate effectively
anytime, from anywhere.
Microsoft Unified Communications offers a unified conferencing
experience that integrates voice, video, Web conferencing, and
desktop sharing to enable easy-to-use, real-time communication and
collaboration right from the desktop. The portable Polycom® CX5000
Unified Conference
Station video conferencing device sets up quickly in meeting rooms,
and extends your Microsoft® Office Live Meeting conferences with
360-degree panorama video.
Increase Operational Efficiency and Flexibility. Microsoft Unified
Communications increases IT flexibility while maximizing resources
and budget with a simplified communications infrastructure and
common management tools. The use of 64-bit servers to consolidate
location or divisional servers eliminates the cost of equipment and
support at remote sites while preserving separate domains or
identities when necessary. The Active Directory® service acts as
the single directory for communications management.
Administrator productivity can be improved with centralized
management capabilities, enabled by the Microsoft Management
Console, in common with other Microsoft products. Additionally,
administrators can provide larger mailboxes at lower cost by
enabling organizations to choose SAN or direct attached storage
(DAS) without sacrificing system availability. Because Microsoft
Unified Communications is available both as on-premises software
and a hosted service, you have the freedom to choose the right
deployment option for your organization.
Amplify IT Protection and Control to Help Reduce Risk. Microsoft
Unified
Communications delivers integrated tools that simplify protecting
your company’s communications against external threats while
empowering you to meet regulatory requirements. These built-in
security features enable you to protect your business’s inbound
and outbound e-mail
from spam, viruses, phishing scams, e-mail policy violations, and
instant messaging based malware. Exchange Server 2010 now also
features easy-to-use and deploy archiving capabilities that,
combined with other enhanced mailbox management features, help your
organization better
address compliance and legal electronic discovery
requirements.
Provide an Interoperable and Extensible Platform Now and for Your
Future.
Microsoft Unified Communications provides an extensible,
software-based foundation that integrates with your existing
messaging and voice infrastructure and adapts to your changing
business needs. Your organization can gain the benefits of Unified
Communications today without radically updating your network
infrastructure or requiring a “forklift” of your existing
telephony platform, as it can interoperate with the Microsoft
platform. Through published and supported developer interfaces,
Microsoft Unified Communications capabilities can be integrated
into your Line of Business
applications to communications-enable your business processes, to
help the integration with existing applications, and to support
business needs of today and tomorrow.
Case Study: Crédit Agricole Improves
Collaboration and Saves Money with Effective Conferencing
Organization Size: 161,800 employees
Organization Profile: The market leader in France for bank
savings,
Crédit Agricole S.A. is Europe’s leading banking group in terms
of retail banking revenues. It operates in
70 countries worldwide.
Business Situation: The bank wants to improve collaboration while
reducing travel costs through more effective conferencing.
Solution: Crédit Agricole deployed Microsoft Office Communications
Server 2007 R2 to provide enhanced audio, video, and Web
conferencing capabilities.
Benefits:
• Reduced conferencing costs of €150,000 (U.S.$205,177)
• Reduced travel costs by 10 to 20 percent
• Improved business decisions
• Increased productivity
Flexible Delivery Options
Microsoft Unified Communications offers two different deployment
options to suit your needs: on-premises, which gives you complete
customization and ownership, or hosted, which supports rapid
scalability and advanced manageability. You can also choose to
deploy a combination of the on-premises
and hosted models. Each of these deployment choices offers a
consistent user experience and common architecture.
Microsoft Unified Communications is designed to be completely
flexible to your business needs.
