Achieving anytime, anywhere communications

Organisations of all types and sizes around the globe are moving toward integrated business communications...

The objectives are simple: productive, motivated employees, more streamlined operations and a competitive business advantage.

The capabilities that make it possible are here today: open, flexible technologies, high-speed networks and a choice of personal communication devices. Several elements are converging—rapidly—to make integrated business communications a reality.

Whether organisations need to replace an ageing Private Branch eXchange (PBX) system to reduce the cost of doing business, streamline the call centre to improve customer service and help increase employee productivity, or capitalise on collaborative technologies to enable collaboration, they are recognising the importance of integrated business communications.

More than just phones or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), integrated business communications is about connecting, communicating and collaborating using almost any device, any media and any method of communication—from voice to data to video—-virtually anytime or anywhere.

Now is the time to adopt a strategy to help your organisation take advantage of integrated business communications—-empowering your people, introducing innovation and capitalising on the benefits to capture a competitive edge.

Breaking down silos to meet demand for enhanced communication
To do business today, organisations need to be flexible and adaptable.

They need to satisfy the needs of employees and customers who demand increased capabilities for communication and collaboration. Yet organisations are frustrated because their existing communications infrastructures aren’t up to the task. Companies’ existing ageing communications infrastructures may not support the increased functionality required by changing employee needs and customer demands.

Typically, these infrastructures were built in siloed environments and have undergone 'organic' modifications, customisations and upgrades. Further, they represent a jumble of different voice, video and data technologies that were never intended to work together but have to do so. 

Compounding the problem are increasingly distributed businesses — with employees, customers and partners dispersed around the globe and increasingly mobile workforces that require new communications devices, often with voice, video and data capabilities.

IBM’s integrated business communications strategy
IT today is not only about technology—it’s about business.

For organisations of all kinds, IT is at the root of the innovation necessary to set a business apart from the competition.

IBM’s strategy for integrated business communications directly addresses this convergence of IT and business by focusing on empowering people to drive business innovation, organisational productivity and employee satisfaction, as well as optimising IT to help reduce costs.

You need to give your people the capabilities they need to create more value for your organisation. Such as faster access to actionable information. Tools that make collaboration easier and more straightforward. Communications capabilities that allow individuals and teams to work when, where and how they choose—- without sacrificing security or productivity.

From a business and IT perspective, anywhere communications is ideal.

It means providing continuous connection and interaction with people, applications and information—-virtually anytime or anywhere, even when offline—-using a range of devices and access points.

It means simplifying the use of all business communication capabilities, including voice, e-mail, video, fax, instant messaging (IM) and Web conferencing. And it involves optimising IT to help reduce total cost of ownership, especially the cost of ongoing maintenance, to increase and speed the return on IT investment.

To enable anywhere communications, IBM provides modular, standards-based and secure software and services that let your people access information on the network and then work with it offline.

They can connect and communicate any way they choose over the same system using whatever device works best for them at any given moment, whether via their desktop or laptop, or even a kiosk, personal digital assistant (PDA), cell phone or smartphone. With IBM, you can bring together all your communication capabilities, including voice, e-mail, IM, video and more — and potentially reduce your overhead costs in the process.

Improving communication and collaboration
Integrated communications services from IBM focus on designing, implementing and managing clients’ communications and networking environments to optimise them for anywhere communications.

IBM Converged Communications Services brings together voice, video and data over IP communications standards. Built on a simple idea that data is data, whether it’s an e-mail text document or a video conference meeting, an integrated environment runs all data across a single converged network and opens up a world of new possibilities.

Voice and video delivered via IP networks become additional data streams that are controlled and managed alongside communications from Web browsers, e-mail clients, databases, business applications, IM tools — such as the advanced IBM Lotus Sametime, which is the first ever platform for Unified Communication and Collaboration featuring industry leading instant messaging, voice and Web conferencing capabilities.

Lotus Sametime is also the only real-time enterprise collaboration platform to offer an open programming model to create new solutions with plugin and mashup capabilities, helping businesses extend their instant messaging and Web conferencing solution.

IBM Lotus Sametime helps reduce the need for travel and related costs with integrated collaboration capabilities such as Web Conferencing, Voice over IP and instant messaging. IBM Lotus Sametime is used by more companies worldwide than any other enterprise IM solution.

IBM Converged Communications Services offers a portfolio of consulting, integration, deployment and management services that can help you design and implement a rich, intuitive and improved communications environment. From a business perspective, IBM can help you streamline your business communications applications and processes, and improve how your employees communicate and collaborate to help increase productivity and support business growth.

IBM takes a broad view of integrated business communications that sees infrastructure as a foundation for empowering people through new ways of connecting, communicating and collaborating.

IBM looks beyond the communications network as merely a replacement for an ageing telecom system or simply a means of reducing cost. We design solutions that can help enhance your business communications at all levels of infrastructure, applications and business processes.

IBM Converged Communications Services is designed to enable you to support key networking environments and build differentiating advantage through innovative processes. Plus, IBM can integrate software, such as Lotus Sametime software, and third-party products into your heterogeneous environment—providing you with the flexibility to leverage your existing investments and choose from a variety of industry-leading vendors, including IBM.

And with other complementary offerings, including IBM Mobility and Wireless Services, we can help you realise integrated business communications by:

• Enabling you to conduct business virtually anytime or anywhere using multiple types of devices and forms of communication, such as always-on mobile and wireless solutions
• Helping you increase individual, work group and organisational productivity with improved collaboration environments that enable a more attractive, satisfying work setting
• Delivering new capabilities by integrating voice, video and data communications
• Simplifying and unifying your communications and networking environment for cost-effective performance.

Creating opportunities for business innovation, flexibility and responsiveness
The true value of integrated business communications lies in its ability to help you empower your people by creating innovative and flexible business and communications processes.

Your organisation can then use those processes to drive more benefits from your relationships internally and externally with partners, suppliers and customers. By consolidating disparate networks and standardising on common technology, you can help improve employee communication as well as responsiveness across the enterprise.

The processes enabled by integrated business communications environments can help you differentiate your organisation in a crowded marketplace.

IBM knows from its own experience that an integrated business communications environment can help an organisation achieve a more resilient and effective infrastructure — facilitating proficient integration of existing investments, expanded communication channels and organisational productivity, security-enhanced communications and lower operational costs.

Enabling new capabilities and enhancing productivity
IBM is positioned to help your organisation capitalise on the benefits of an integrated business communications environment.

We’ve helped transform communications for more than 100 clients worldwide—including Cisco, Dow, Lloyds and Visteon. But one of our biggest success stories is actually with our own organisation. More than 110,000 of our employees are using more than half a million communications devices running over one unified network.

IBM holds key strategic relationships globally with major equipment suppliers, software companies and network service providers, enabling us to deliver outstanding expertise in integrating and managing multi-vendor infrastructures. And we have proven competency in managing mission-critical communications networks.

Outsourcing contracts for IBM Converged Communications Services include managing rollout and providing ongoing support for a large industrial firm (40,000 phones), a large insurance firm (69,000 phones) and a large aerospace company (160,000 phones).

IBM’s own experience with unified technologies has validated the integrated business communications promise of helping to eliminate IT redundancy, enhance communications and collaboration for a dispersed and mobile workforce, improve customer service, enhance employee productivity and lower the cost of doing business.

As it moves toward fully integrated business communications, IBM has seen significant benefits in several areas:

• Empowering remote workers. With a large percentage of its workforce now remote, IBM is meeting the pent-up demand for real-time communications through integrated business communications applications. At the same time, the capabilities of the underlying converged infrastructure enables more employees to work remotely. IBM, once famous for relocating its employees, now makes it possible for employees to remain in one city even as their careers advance—creating a vital contribution to employee satisfaction.
• Enhancing employee productivity. The speed and ease of use possible in a converged environment has led IBM to project considerable efficiencies and gains in productivity for its users—up to million of hours for the company annually.
• Reducing costs. Audio conferencing, which represents a significant portion of IBM’s annual telecommunications bill, has seen significant cost reduction. The cost of VoIP long distance is 60 percent less than that of traditional long distance. And IBM offices in Canada—which now run fully converged environments—expect to approach a large decrease in their overall pre-convergence communications expenses.
• Streamlining IT management. With the majority of its deployment completed, IBM now has a single, consolidated and converged corporate IP network that is one of the largest enterprise deployments of converged communications in the world. IBM can help put you on the fast track toward integrated business communications. Integrated business communications is not a future capability—-it’s achievable now. It’s not an experimental technology—-it’s proven today. And its benefits are not wishful thinking—-they’re backed up by real-world IBM and client results. IBM’s goal is to deliver solutions that can yield far-reaching benefits by enabling you to create a more flexible, connected enterprise, increase operational efficiency and develop innovative approaches to the way you do business.

For more information
www-07.ibm.com/businesscenter/au/istart/index.html

8/5/26_ex_nl_h