Anywhere with Webex | Gurste Case study
UK startup Gurste is taking on big responsibilities. They work to ensure no organisation faces a crisis alone. They might help a small shop recover after a fire, aid an international distributor with sudden supply chain issues, or assist clients with their security and counter-terrorism planning.
No matter the client, Gurste starts with a process of threat and risk assessment to determine what they need to prepare the client for. Once the assessment is complete, Gurste works with clients to develop plans the businesses can implement should threats and risks materialize. Most importantly, these plans help ensure that employees stay safe and receive long-term support as needed. Gurste also helps companies build public relations plans and identify other ongoing actions they might need to take after a crisis. From there, Gurste supports its client in training their teams to ensure that plans run like clockwork as soon as they’re required.
With such a wide range of clients scattered internationally, Gurste needed a collaboration platform that was secure, reliable, cost-efficient, and easy to use. They tried Microsoft Teams, but found the user experience clunky. Gurste explored Zoom, but it struggled to meet necessary security requirements. They also used RingCentral, but moved away due to a mixture of high prices and first-party support for Cisco desk phones. After ruling these providers out, they worked with their Cisco partner and decided Cisco Webex was the perfect fit due to its robust feature set, performance, security, and support.
“We are a remote-first company, so Cisco Webex is central to what we do,” said Gurste’s CEO Connor Gurney.
Gurste uses Cisco Webex Meetings as their primary method of communicating with clients, both on an everyday basis and during an incident. The video conferencing tool’s many features have served the business well.
“We regularly use the recording and transcription features of Cisco Webex Meetings to ensure that everybody can access information,” Gurney said. “This means that we always have a record of truth, which is vital when conducting post-incident reviews.”
When disaster strikes and clients call, time is of the essence. Gurste must quickly make accurate assessments of the situation and rapidly deploy the correct resources.
“Let’s say there was a fire in the building. We can quickly send them a link to join a Cisco Webex Meeting via their mobile phone when they’re in a safe place and see what is happening in real-time,” Gurney said. “It can be incredibly easy to underestimate what’s going on based on just a phone call. Having reliable video conferencing available is important for us. Having Cisco Webex video conferencing allows us to see and understand the situation — first-hand.”
Security is critical for Gurste. Whether responding to an incident in real-time or developing a contingency plan, clients share details that need to stay safe and private.
“A lot of the information we handle is incredibly sensitive. We must have the very best in security, and we get that with Webex. Webex offers end-to-end encryption and is the only solution we identified that is able to offer this on VoIP calls, meetings, and messaging, which made it by far the best solution for our security needs.”
While they previously had to make calls from their personal mobile phones while working remotely, Gurste now relies on the Cisco Webex Calling platform to make and receive calls from any device, anywhere in the world.
In times when a phone call is the right move, the Gurste team has found Cisco Webex Calling to be an excellent resource for internal and external collaboration. They also use the Cisco Webex App to collaborate with suppliers in the UK and abroad.
As a small company, Gurste has been impressed with the responsiveness of the Cisco Webex team. Any time they have a question or a unique challenge, the Cisco Webex team is there. There was no initial cost to get set up, and clients and contractors without technical experience were able to get up and running quickly and easily.
There are several ways that Gurste measures its ROI from Cisco Webex. One aspect relates directly to the company’s bottom line.
“Previously, we might have had to send somebody a significant distance, only to find out it could have been handled with a video conference. Cisco Webex means that now we are not deploying resources unnecessarily. We also have gained increased capabilities around security, which we didn’t have before.”
Gurste has also seen great ROI in terms of client satisfaction. Gurste needed a reliable solution that could help them communicate smoothly with clients and deliver excellent customer experiences. Having that face-to-face interaction on Cisco Webex really makes a difference.
“When our clients call, it is most likely because they are having one of the worst days of their lives. Being able to interact with somebody who is not as emotional, who can calm them down, and who can begin to provide solutions is important,” Gurney said.
Because no two incidents are ever exactly alike, the Gurste team also uses Cisco Webex as an important source of knowledge to help them learn and do better each time.
“Cisco Webex Meetings and Cisco Webex Calling enable us to have recorded and auditable conversations while responding to an incident,” Gurney said. “This is crucial as it means we can review decisions as they were made in real-time and harness the knowledge that may otherwise be lost, which allows us to learn vital lessons, which may well save lives in the future.”
Additionally, as Gurste grows and expands, it is looking into how it might leverage additional Cisco Webex solutions, such as incorporating Cisco Webex Events for webinars and other educational sessions.
Simplify and future-proof your technology footprint Amillan
The modern business environment is becoming increasingly complex, and organisations in the public sector are no exception. One key challenge is keeping up with the rapidly evolving technology landscape. With cloud computing, unified communications, and other technologies emerging as critical components of enterprise IT, public sector organisations must take steps to ensure they are efficient and meeting the needs of their stakeholders and local communities.
Cloud-hosted unified communications infrastructure can be a powerful tool in the public sector’s digital transformation efforts. Here are some of the key benefits that such infrastructure can offer:
In conclusion, cloud-hosted unified communications infrastructure is an increasingly important technology for public sector organizations looking to transform their operations and maximise efficiency. By providing enhanced collaboration, increased productivity, improved flexibility and scalability, better security and compliance, lower costs, and improved citizen engagement, this infrastructure can offer significant benefits to public sector organisations of all sizes and types. To realize these benefits, it is essential that public sector organisations work with trusted and experienced service providers like Amillan to design, deploy, and manage their unified communications systems. Contact Amillan to discuss how we can help you take the next steps on your digital transformation journey.
The University of Sunderland (UoS) has a student FTE count of over 24,000 based across campuses in Sunderland, London and Hong Kong and, in addition UoS has many partnerships with learning institutions in various countries around the globe, extending its global teaching reach. Sunderland is recognised internationally as a leading, digital first university, with a long-established commitment to widening participation, world-leading research, public and private sector collaborations, and a track-record for providing quality student experiences.
To underpin their digital first agenda, the university adopted a cloud first strategy, focussing on leveraging key skillsets offered by managed service providers to align activities that underpin core operational infrastructure. This allows UoS to be more digitally transformational, adding greater value to the University and its customers.
To tie in with this strategy, in 2021 UoS made the decision to scale out its current investment within O365 and migrate telephony to a single unified communications platform, accessible from anywhere in the world, further supporting the aim to move away from data centres and an on-premise footprint.
In early 2021 the University began seeking a supplier to fully manage and support the design, implementation and migration of staff from their current telephony services to a hosted Microsoft Teams for telephony service. UoS’s telephony environment at the time was a mixture of Skype for Business 2015 and Astra MX1, with smaller legacy PBX systems also on-site in London and Hong Kong campuses. The Microsoft Teams app was used by the University, but for collaboration, and meetings only.
The university conducted a procurement process via CCS’s RM3808 Network Services 2. After an extensive review of the marketplace, they made the decision to partner with communications specialist Amillan for this project. Amillan is a communications integrator with over 30 years’ experience in enterprise voice technology, holding Microsoft’s Communication competency for 15 years. Amillan supports a number of other UK universities with their voice infrastructure, and it was decided they were the best fit to support the University in this digital transformation.
Amillan’s solution provides the University of Sunderland with a Cloud based Telephony Platform delivered from a Private Cloud which hosts Session Border Controller’s, PSTN SIP Trunks and for the migration phases, SIP Integration to the existing On-Premise Skype for Business deployment. Session Border Controllers are configured in a resilient configuration to provide Microsoft Direct Routing towards the University of Sunderland’s M365 Tenant. Amillan’s Direct Routing provides the Teams application with PSTN capabilities for all incoming and outgoing calls.
In the Amillan Data Centre, GAMMA SIP Trunks are provided in the form of Active / Standby. This provides the University of Sunderland with a resilient PSTN service from the GAMMA Public SIP Infrastructure. All DDI Numbers were be ported to the new GAMMA SIP Service. These SIP Trunks and DDI Numbers are presented to Amillan’s Session Border Controllers which are also working in Active Standby mode. The SBC’s send the DDI to the end user via Direct Routing into Microsoft’s M365 architecture, delivering “Dial Tone” into the Teams users.
Like all Universities, UoS required extra SIP Channel Capacity during the annual clearing period. Amillan’s solution has been built with the high clearing capacity in mind, however with the Gamma Portal the University can change the channel count instantly, meaning that outside of clearing the University can scale down the SIP Trunks from the Gamma network, only paying for what is required, meaning no wasted expenditure.
Due to the covid 19 pandemic and the immediate shift to home working, many university staff were already utilising teams for internal calling and Skype for Business for external calls, this made the transition to teams for all telephony significantly easier with regards to change management and user adaption. All staff already had the appropriate equipment to allow them to work in agile way from home or when on campus with laptops and headsets, and the project included replacing physical handsets with Teams compatible alternatives where required. This in itself was a remarkable achievement for the University and for Amillan, as the rollout and the configuration of YEALINK Teams handsets was a first for both. In addition, there are several communal analogue devices (e.g. corridor phones) which needed to be migrated to SIP as part of the overall design consideration. Amillan connected these endpoints to a SIP to Analogue convertor to provide a DDI and dial tone for this service.
Amillan fully managed the on-boarding procedure for the UK and Hong Kong sites to enable all campuses for Teams Telephony. A risk adverse approach was followed where Amillan connected to the on-site topology using Public IP Addresses from both the University of Sunderland and the Amillan data centre, allowing for a phased migration of users from Skype for Business to Teams, avoiding a “big bang” approach, resulting in a seamless and disruption free transition of services.
Following the successful upgrade to Microsoft Teams, Amillan now fully manages and supports the service for the University, with Amillan’s Service Centre and engineering resource supplementing UoS’s in-house skills. This includes Amillan having agent access to the University’s IT Service Desk, meaning any ticket that is submitted for telephony is sent to Amillan to resolve and close seamlessly.
“The upgrade to Teams for the University’s telephony is an important step forward for our Digital First agenda, providing staff with simplified communication and collaboration platform wherever they are in the world. Amillan’s management of the transition has been first-class with a true desire to understand our organisation needs and become a valued partner moving forward.” Jason Marshall IT Service Manager, University of Sunderland.
“We admire the University’s forward-thinking drive to invest in technologies which improve experiences for staff and students. We hope that this project will be the start of a long-term partnership between both organisations. ” Patrick Daly Managing Director, Amillan.
As we enter a new decade, businesses large and small face a long list of strategic challenges – and technology will play a vital role in meeting them, particularly when it comes to communications infrastructure.
Enterprises have an even more difficult task, given the scale of their operations: it’s not difficult to imagine how complicated building a future-facing technology strategy for 2,000 individuals working across five offices can be. But by considering the most important issues and planning accordingly, enterprises can tackle the challenges they’re set to face.
Customers want multi-channel communication
Whereas customers might once have put up with bad service simply to avoid the hassle of finding a new supplier, it’s now incredibly easy to research and find alternatives. Accordingly, the price of poor customer service is high. In fact, one study showed it costs the UK economy £15 billion per year – while 73% of UK consumers have ended their relationship with a company due to the service they received.
Reasons for this include ‘customers being forced to repeat themselves’, ‘customer service staff not knowing a customer’s history and value’, and ‘not being able to switch between communication channels easily.’
This last point is particularly interesting. Clearly, businesses have to be ready to communicate across email, live web chats, video or even social media. While agents must be able to access a customer’s history, no matter where they’re working from, or what channel they’re communicating via.
The rise of flexible working
However, customers aren’t the only ones with changing expectations. It’s well established that employees increasingly want flexible working patterns. Just 14% say they want to work the ‘traditional hours of 9 to 5’, and 70% want to work more flexibility in the future.
Whether it’s starting and leaving earlier, being able to take breaks in the middle of the day to attend to family life, or working from home, employers need to think about how they can accommodate accordingly. Especially if they want to attract and retain the best staff.
Yet they also have to keep providing high levels of customer service. So, businesses don’t just need technology that works well in the office – they need functionalities like picking up a call from both mobile and fixed devices, or being able to see a centralised customer history in one location, regardless of where they’re working from or who has spoken to the customer before.
Tackling uncertain times
Complicating matters even further, enterprises increasingly need flexible tools that can scale up and down with minimal hassle. Most enterprises always have one eye on the possibilities of business growth – which often includes launching new sites, hiring new staff, and keeping technology up to date.
But IT decision-makers should always be mindful of the possible need to downsize, whether that’s due to a period of economic uncertainty, a site closing down, or simple ebbs and flows of demand throughout the year.
Unified Communications: a solution for the challenges of the future
All of the problems above can be tackled by implementing a rigorous Unified Communications (UC) solution. With UC, businesses can combine voice, video calling, conferencing and instant messaging in one elegant technology stack that meets the customer demand for multi-channel communication.
UC can also benefit employees. Different conversations can be accessed from different devices, helping to assist flexible working and improve efficiency. And, given Collaborate is a scalable investment with a usage-based payment structure, concerns around up or downsizing can be laid to rest.
The foundations for UC
However, businesses shouldn’t rush to embrace UC without also considering the foundations of their communications infrastructure. A UC technology stack contains a number of bandwidth-hungry applications that require a low latency, high quality network. Without having this network in place, applications won’t function as they should, limiting employee productivity.
The customer experience will also be damaged. There’s nothing more frustrating than the connection dropping out when you’ve queued and waited to speak to an adviser – which means there’s no point in investing in a seamless communication tool to fulfil the need for multi-channel communication if the actual quality of a call, web chat, or video is poor.
So, if you’re purchasing an over-the-top solution without consideration of the underlying network, you might find your new investment doesn’t deliver the benefits you’re expecting. Instead, IT decision makers should look to work with a provider that can provide a high quality and ultra-reliable connectivity solution, as well as UC technology.
Tackle the challenges of the future with confidence
It’s certainly not easy to plan a communications strategy for a multi-site enterprise, and decision makers must always be prepared to be flexible and adapt as needed. But with UC – and the right foundations to support it – large organisations can successfully tackle many of the challenges the coming years are likely to bring.
Amillan supports a Unified Communications approach, allowing workers to unleash productivity by being able to work more flexible and efficient. Contact Us today to see how we can implement UC for your business.
Original Article can be found here: How enterprises can use Unified Communications to tackle the challenges of the future (2020)
Some industries – like those employing field engineers or on-site consultants – have no choice but to support mobile working. Others still have a choice about providing remote working, but possibly not for much longer.
Virtually any employee has the right to request flexible working provisions, including working from home and your business is legally bound to consider each request. Attitudes towards work are changing however, and candidates are increasingly choosing roles that allow them to work from home.
Understandably, some firms are nervous about this change. You can’t see your remote employees, so how do you know they are working? And how do you build a team that works closely together when some members are in a completely different physical place? How do you give them access to the systems and data they need to do their jobs? What is the wider impact of having people based outside the office?
These are all legitimate concerns. But they can also be addressed to help you build a distributed workforce that delivers value for customers and your business.
Technology
Thanks to broadband connectivity and the Internet, it is now much easier to enable access to corporate IT systems. Many of the applications you use are probably already hosted in the cloud, for instance. Once issued with a user name and password, employees can access and use these systems from anywhere in the world, allowing them to be productive anywhere in the world.
The same is true of your internal communications systems, like telephone and instant messaging. VoIP telecoms are typically accessible anywhere, allowing your remote employees to connect to the company switchboard using a handset in their home office – or even a mobile app.
Indeed, Unified Communications brings together telecoms with core productivity tools like calendars, email and files. Almost everything needed to work can be accessed from a single interface at home or in the office. Your workers can accept incoming client calls or join an inter-office video conference call with just a few mouse clicks.
The Unified Communications approach has the added advantage of collecting analytics about how the platform is used. As well as ‘presence’ indicators that show who is online and available, analytics allow managers to report on the activities employees have been engaged on and ensure they’re being as productive as expected.
Consistency
Inconsistency is the enemy of productivity. Confront employees with an unfamiliar IT experience and you can expect a corresponding drop in output.
As you investigate remote working provisions you should also take a look at the tools and systems used by employees. Consolidating and standardising processes and software will help in-house employees be more effective – and help to reduce your annual licensing and maintenance bills. Ideally, you’re looking to create a platform that works in the same way for workers in the office or out in the field.
Standardisation ensures that your employees really can work anywhere, permanently or temporarily. You will also find that administrative overheads and cost of support reduce too.
Education
The best tools in the world are useless if your people don’t know how to use them. Beyond standardising the platform that everyone uses, you also need to ensure that staff are properly trained to get the most from the available tools.
Over time employees develop bad working habits, defaulting to certain tools because they are “easier” – even if they come at the cost of productivity and profitability. Remote workers may decide to make customer calls direct from their mobile because it’s a few less taps, for instance. Although seemingly easier for the remote worker, your business loses out on the additional analytics and reporting data that is recorded when they use their Unified Communications app.
Training staff to use the chosen systems will give them the confidence and knowledge they need moving forward. Then, when they make the move into the field, your workers will take the same habits and practices with them delivering a consistent experience for your customers too.
The world of work is definitely changing. Whether you’re looking to reduce office costs by building a remote workforce or hope to shift to a project-based production model that uses a distributed network of contractors, your business needs to take remote working seriously.
Yes, there are barriers to remote working – but they can all be overcome to deliver a better experience to your customers and a stronger profit margin for your business. You can learn more in our free ebook: Creating The Modern Workplace or visit our ROI calculator to further understand the current impact of your technology setup.
Amillan supports a Unified Communications approach, allowing workers to unleash productivity by being able to work more flexible and efficient. Contact Us today to see how we can implement UC for your business.
Original Article can be found here: Maintaining Productivity While Managing A Mobile Workforce (2020)
In a strong economy, most businesses will enjoy greater prosperity. Disposable income is at a high, consumers are financially confident, which means they’re more likely to increase their purchasing. For SMEs, it can be a double-edged sword. As trading ramps up, SME workforces can feel too stretched to handle all the new business. If the economy slumps, they’re the first to feel the pinch. And unlike their enterprise counterparts, SMEs often lack the steady cashflow and financial resilience needed to survive, what can be, a rollercoaster economy.
While SMEs rarely say no to new customers, when it comes to effective communications they can’t always adequately deal with them. So, while being busy is a nice problem to have – it’s still a problem. In this case, businesses should consider their current communications solution. Traditional technology is inherently inflexible, changes can be slow to make and the systems can lack features designed to make customer service delivery easier.
Feature-rich call management
Fortunately for SMEs, call management solutions have come a long way from the old switchboard – or indeed, the legacy desk-phone with a choice of three lines for callers. Today sees some exceptional feature-rich solutions using IP-based technology, SIP Trunking. These solutions offer intelligent call routing and redirection based on the number dialled, time and location of the caller, efficient call queuing and designated call continuity plans, that the business can control.
This last feature is crucial for SMEs, who can’t afford to miss a call and know that an unanswered phone might mean custom going elsewhere. Email alerts are available for missed calls and automatic call diversions if the desired number is busy or unable to answer
Caller identification has never been easier
We’re living in an age of data and analytics and there’s no reason that the telephone should be excluded from that. After all, the easiest way to make something better is to fully understand how it works.
Inbound call management solutions are data-rich systems, designed to give businesses a greater understanding of who is calling, when and why. With that information, they can adapt staffing schedules to account for busy times and even take on new people if the data tells them it’s the right thing to do.
This, as with every other aspect of a call management system, is hosted in a simple-to-use online portal, which is also supported by an app. Again, this is a huge boost for SMEs. Quick access to key call management tools makes it easy to manage inbound calls with no need to burden staff or for outsourcing.
Keep talking, keep working
We all know that SMEs are integral to national prosperity. Whether that’s because they employ so much of the UK workforce, or because they form the economic heart of the nation. But more and more we’re seeing stories about SMEs being squeezed, or struggling to grow as well as they might.
By replacing traditional ISDN-based telephony with SIP, SMEs are not only able to take on more business but can also save up to 50% on line rental and up to 25% on calls. These savings can free up resources for innovation projects to capitalise on the new sources of income.
Success depends on being able to take every opportunity that opens up. That’s why it’s vital for SMEs to know who’s talking to them and what they want from the conversation. SIP-based communication solutions enable exactly that.
What Amillan can offer …
Amillan has the skills and support level to ensure you always have the services you need up and running. We possess the ability to ‘port’ existing numbers over to your SIP trunks, a vital consideration for business continuity and customer confidence.
Contact Amillan today, so that we can guide you through your transition to SIP and VoIP.
Original article can be found here: How SIP solutions can help SMEs take control of inbound calls (2020)
About Yorkshire Housing
The Yorkshire Housing group was formed in 1999 and became Yorkshire Housing in 2008. Today they manage more than 18,000 affordable and social rent homes across 20 local authorities. They are a not-for-profit organisation, meaning all earnings are re-invested into the services provided.
Yorkshire Housing’s ambition is for everyone to have the opportunity to live in a quality home they can afford. To do this they are growing as a business, building 3,000 homes by 2021 and increasing the range of services available.
Yorkshire Housing had taken the decision to move 250 staff to a new central location, with the focus on increasing customer service, whilst boosting staff productivity and efficiency.
The Solution
Amillan was chosen to supply Yorkshire Housing with a Unified Communications and IP telephony solution for it’s new ‘Corporate Centre’ location in Leeds, together with a new cabling and data network infrastructure as part of a wider technology roll-out. This encompassed five additional office locations and numerous satellite offices across Yorkshire.
The unified communications solution provided Yorkshire Housing with advanced presence capabilities – knowing who is available to handle enquiries or to call-out to sites, skills-based routing to transfer calls to the most appropriate person, collaboration, conferencing, and mobility for its workforce meaning that staff were able to be contacted whether in the office, at a satellite location or working remotely.
“A key factor in the success of the project has been Amillan’s precise and encompassing project management. The fact that one company has been able to provide all aspects of the solution for Yorkshire Housing Ltd has made the whole installation much more straightforward, combined with its ability to carefully manage not only their own installation but to have provided co-ordination with third parties too. This has proved invaluable, and we are delighted with the project.”
About Lyons Seafoods
Lyons Seafoods is the UK’s leading supplier of prawns and speciality seafoods, providing the highest quality products from controlled ecologically sound and sustainable sources.
Lyons places environmental considerations at the core of its business operations and is an industry leader in sustainable sourcing and ethical partnerships.
Lyons Seafoods operates three sites in the UK (totalling approx. 300 users), two in the South West of England, with a third 400 miles away in Duns, Scotland. The organisation has a wide variety of job functions, including traditional desk workers, home/ mobile workers and factory operatives.
With platforms approaching the end of life, Lyons Seafoods was keen to explore the latest developments in Unified Communications, seeing the potential for IT to become a facilitator in increasing operational efficiency across their geographically dispersed workforce.
The Project
Amillan sought to deeply understand Lyon Seafoods’ requirements and the business environment that the solution would have to exist within. After evaluating several alternatives it was decided that a Microsoft Skype for Business Unified Communications and Enterprise Voice platform would best address the problems that the organisation was facing.
To allow communications in areas of the factory with poor signal, Amillan also worked with Lyons Seafoods to improve Wi-Fi signal coverage which would give them access to Skype for Business from a smartphone or tablet, allowing them full UC functionality whilst roaming around the site. This development meant for the first time, all employees are connectable and contactable across Lyons’ entire estate.
In addition, Amillan provides ongoing training and priority technical support via the in-house Amillan Service Centre (ASC) to Lyons Seafoods, ensuring any issues encountered can be dealt with quickly and efficiently, with minimal impact to Lyons Seafood’s day-to-day business operations.
After roughly 7 years of successfully supporting the Skype for Business platform, Amillan assisted Lyons Seafoods in their migration to Microsoft Teams in the Office 365 cloud, utilising Voice Direct Routing. This allowed Lyons Seafoods to seamlessly migrate to Microsoft’s latest offering in UC, without affecting the daily running of the business.
Amillan, in partnership with Quiss technology, continues to work closely with Lyons Seafoods to help them ensure their infrastructure is agile enough to take advantage of the latest developments and features in UC.
About Perenco
Perenco is Europe’s first independent oil and gas company, with a worldwide portfolio of assets resulting from a unique know-how in the operation of mature fields and from an ambitious acquisition strategy.
Since Perenco was founded in 1975, the company has diversified to become the leading independent oil and gas company in Europe today. The company produces 465,000 BOEPD through its drilling, development and operations, thanks to its onshore and offshore presence in 14 countries.
Perenco’s objectives presented a unique challenge for Amillan, due to the company requiring IP telephony for offshore locations in the North Sea, where Perenco is a leading operator processing almost 15% of the UK national gas production.
The Solution
Amillan we’re initially given the opportunity to implement it’s cost-effective and high-quality annual Maintenance and Support contract for four Perenco sites across the UK. The contract consisted of services such as Problem & Incident Management, Reporting, Field Engineering, 24/7 telephone assistance and much more.
After the effectiveness of the Maintenance and Support contract, Amillan were selected to further provide upgrades to three of its offshore locations, replacing the current ageing systems with a new hybrid telephony platform. This provided native support for digital, analogue, IP, SIP desk phones to preserve phone, cabling and network investments.
The solution provided was completely modular and resilient to address the evolution of daily business, as well as the ability to expand capacity or add additional features and applications in the future. This also addressed the limitations of a restricted environment, allowing for a fully VoIP solution, or to install Analog and Digital telephony.
Amillan continues to support Perenco’s Hybrid telephony system in seven offshore and onshore locations across the UK, delivering our bespoke services to the organisation.
ISDN is fast becoming a technology of the past with the service set to be phased out by 2025 and replaced by SIP, an IP based service delivered over broadband and/or leased live circuits.
Here are some considerations that organisations need to think about when planning a move away from ISDN to SIP.
This is a great time to define your business needs and document your existing communications connectivity, for example, how many phone lines and numbers you have and where they lead to or terminate. Consider too what currently happens to calls if your lines are busy – are they queued or handled by voicemail?
Because SIP trunks are more flexible and versatile than ISDN this is also the time to map out how you could use and benefit from the new features that will be available once you have made the switch. This would include for example updating your disaster recovery and business continuity plans as SIP trunks can have user-configured failover to secondary circuits for resilience and/or call redirection to alternative locations. At the same time, you can assess your remote and homeworking plans so that employees working outside of the main head office have access to free ‘on-net’ calls due to the fact they are on the same dialling plan.
SIP is perfect for seasonal business or planned changes in call activity volumes such as a sales and marketing campaign so you can factor these requirements in with your supplier – and remember, unlike ISDN with SIP you only pay for the services you use and not for spare trunks to sit idle when they are not required.
Many PBX phone systems designed after 2007 are compatible with SIP but today many users are ditching legacy, hardware-based telephony solutions for cloud or hosted telephony and now is a great time to examine the deployment benefits of these new solutions. Again, with cloud telephony, you only pay for what you use which is perfect for fast-growing organisations and those with seasonal requirements.
What Amillan can offer …
Amillan has the skills and support level to ensure you always have the services you need up and running. We possess the ability to ‘port’ existing numbers over to your SIP trunks, a vital consideration for business continuity and customer confidence.
Contact Amillan today, so that we can guide you through your transition to SIP and VoIP.
Original article can be found here: The SIP Series (III): How do I replace ISDN? (2017)
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