The University of Westminster

The University of Westminster is a multi-campus educational institution with a vision for the provision of communications services in the future. The vision aims to future-proof the telephony infrastructure and deliver enhanced communications applications and services for all users.

In addition to a general telephony upgrade, the university also wished to improve the resilience of the telephony service by removing all single points of failure as part of the long-term plan. The university recognises that its network service delivery will require changes to support this transition.

The Challenge

The University of Westminster, which serves nearly 25,000 students, wanted to give staff a robust and reliable communications infrastructure capable of improving cross-campus and external collaboration in order to deliver more effective corporate and student services. With the opening of the new location in Cavendish Street, the university had the need to connect the human resources, finance and marketing teams based in the new central London office with other university departments.

In addition to this initial requirement, upgraded telephony for over 3,200 staff with a seamless migration from its existing telephony system across multiple campuses was needed. Once complete, employees across the entire campus will have access to IP telephony, softphone application and unified communications tools.

As part of a significant restructuring project that would see schools consolidated and several departments relocated to new premises, Amillan were tasked with implementing the changes in just two months.

The Solution

Amillan was selected to provide the first phase of telephony solution to meet the needs of 400 users in its new location in Cavendish Street, and the second phase which was to facilitate the migration from the existing network for over 3,200 users in total across all of the university’s campuses.

Amillan’s completion of the initial IP telephony roll-out to 400 employees allowed the university to migrate staff to the Cavendish Street office with minimal disruption and was delivered well within the two month time-frame.

The next phase implementing unified communications enabled staff to use the Alcatel-Lucent ‘My Instant Communicator’ application which is accessible via mobile, desktop or laptop and provides advanced telephony and messaging services for mobile workers with a single mailbox for voice mail, fax and email. Benefits of unified communications also include collaboration services such as instant messaging, audio and video conferencing and presence services which enables staff to locate and connect with colleagues in real time.

The Benefits

Designing and implementing unified communications across the entire university has achieved the institution’s vision of creating communications service for the future, allowing staff to connect cross-campus and giving them access to IP telephony, softphone applications and unified communications tools based on their individual requirements.

Single centralised system

Amillan was able to provide the multi-site university with a single, sophisticated telephony system with advanced features available to all users at all sites. The system also provides the university with centralised voicemail, directory services, call accounting, conferencing, unified communications, call centre, management and operation facilities across all sites. This greatly simplifies the management and support of all users and sites, whilst providing an upgraded and integrated multi-campus solution interlinking the several locations.

Tailored solutions

Amillan designed and implemented a solution specifically created to meet the needs of the University of Westminster.The client needed the swift implementation of unified communications to ensure that the new location, that was to house corporate staff, was up and running and able to connect with other university departments immediately, which was delivered by Amillan within the time frame given. The remaining solution to be rolled-out across the rest of the campuses was tailor-made by Amillan to ensure that all staff would have access to IP telephony, softphone applications and unified communication tools, based on their individual requirements.

Flexible Approach

A flexible approach was taken to facilitate the ease of provision of additional capacity and user moves and changes in the future. Telephony for user populations at remote locations was implemented as was mobility services for designated users both on- and off-site. Amillan was able increase the mobility of staff by implementing telephony for user populations at remote locations, including home workers.

The Future

In the future, the university is looking to use technology to enhance the student experience, for example offering SMS notifications to hearing-impaired students. With the technology in place, this is a possibility for the very near future.

The new structure also means that the University of Westminster has extra capacity for any future business expansion.