News
Plymouth City Council
NEC signs contract with Plymouth City Council to implement one of the largest Microsoft Lync deployments in the UK
- NEC installs next-generation Unified Communications system at Plymouth City Council to support 4000 users -
NEC IT Solutions has won a contract with Plymouth City Council to implement Microsoft Lync, the next-generation Unified Communications system, which represents the largest non-Microsoft delivered deployment of the system in the UK to date. NEC’s implementation of Microsoft Lync will reduce the council’s current ICT maintenance and operating costs enable flexible working and support improved communications across the entire estate.
The new Microsoft Lync solution will replace and consolidate the Council’s existing communications infrastructure into a single environment which will serve over 4000 users across multiple sites with the ability of increasing the number of users moving forward. All staff will have access to individual and group instant messaging, video conferencing, collaborative virtual meeting space and remote access and support.
Neville Cannon, Assistant Director of ICT at Plymouth City Council comments, “Plymouth City Council put a tender out to the market for a replacement communications solution which would enable the council to become more agile and streamline our communications in light of the recent budget cuts announced by the Government. Over the past few months we have had to reduce our office space by 30%, however we still need to be able to deliver the same levels of service to the Public and our old communication systems simply would not have enabled us to achieve this objective. NEC not only provided the best technical offering but also proposed a solution designed to meet our business requirements, demonstrating their understanding about what we were looking to achieve.”
Mr Cannon continues, “Having considered what we were paying on maintenance and the costs to bring our current environment up to a standard where it could be used for Unified Communications, we quickly arrived at the conclusion that even with the cost of implementing the new Microsoft Lync technology we would achieve a tangible return on investment.”
By implementing Microsoft Lync with NEC, Plymouth City Council now can incorporate remote workers through a single interface on to instant messenger, voice communications and video and web conference calls. This makes it easy for users to collaborate together and stay connected from virtually anywhere.
Mr Cannon continues, “Flexible working is now a reality at the council. For all staff to be able to instantly see the availability of others no matter where they might be located can only improve the effectiveness and efficiency with the way we work, which in turn will facilitate to further improvements in our service delivery. It also enables us to implement new flexible working practices and potentially make further cost savings on expensive office space. With the ability to extend the system in the future, we can also look at rolling this out to or federating with other public sector organisations in the region.”
Mr Cannon concludes, “NEC has worked very closely with the Council to understand our key requirements and present a system that ticked all of the boxes in terms of solution design, functionality and ease of use. I believe the Council’s investment in the Microsoft Lync technology is not only an enabler for the Council to implement more flexible and agile working practices but also allows us to cut costs and save money as needed without affecting services.”