Unified messaging scores with NFL: communications network improves productivity and reduces operation expenses - Voice Networks - NFL Films

Communications News, Nov, 2003

When NFL Films broke ground on a 200,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art motion picture and television studio in Mount Laurel, N.J., the company wanted to create a facility that would bring all its various production and post-production operations under one roof. With this investment in state-of-the-art production technology, NFL Films also saw this as an opportunity to invest in 21 century voice communications. The company chose to implement an IP communications solution.

NFL Films, which, for more than 40 years, has preserved the most compelling moments in National Football League (NFL) history on film and video, has seen both operational cost savings and employee productivity increases from IP communications and unified messaging (UM). It reports that employees save up to an hour a day with unified messaging rather than a traditional legacy voice system. Employees are now able to retrieve and respond to all their messages from anywhere by accessing a single inbox.

The company's headquarters span two buildings on the Mount Laurel campus. Each building houses a data center with a Cisco Catalyst 6509 switch at the core and Cisco CallManager software, the call-processing agent that extends enterprise telephony features to NFL Films' more than 475 Cisco IP phones.

In voice/data connectivity closets throughout the buildings, NFL Films maintains Cisco Catalyst 4006 switches, with multihomed connections from each switch to the Cisco Catalyst 6509 in each building's data center. With multihomed connections, each Catalyst 4006 has at least two physical connections to the core Catalyst 6509 to ensure redundancy for high availability. Further redundancy is built in at the entry point from the Verizon synchronous optical network (SONET) rings. NFL Films maintains two communications entry points from Verizon--one to each building-so that if one facility fails, all data is automatically routed to the other connection.

For voice mail and UM, NFL Films installed the Cisco Unity unified messaging software on a HP/Compaq 320 server at the Mt. Laurel facility. The company is currently upgrading to Windows 2003 from Windows NT 40 and Exchange 5.5, along with Active Directory 2003 and Exchange 2000, and is upgrading to Cisco Unity 4.0. The NFL Network recently acquired a new building in California, and as part of the studio and office build-out, NFL Films has installed an additional Cisco Unity server and Cisco Call Manager server there.

NFL Films estimates a savings of approximately $400,000 as a result of installing the solution rather than a traditional PBX with similar user features. This savings was realized due to the decreased need for cable, installation labor and back-end equipment. Additionally, long-distance telephone bills have been reduced by approximately 60%.

The company has seen productivity improvements with UM. Workers can listen to their c-mail over the phone, check voice messages from the Internet, and when Cisco Unity is integrated with a supported third-party fax server, forward incoming faxes to wherever they may be-even at the Super Bowl thousands of miles away.

"A lot of our people don't even remember their voice mail password anymore because they now get their voice mail through e-mail," says Steve Eager, director of network systems administration at NFL Films. "We estimate that the UM solution is saving our workers roughly an hour a day by eliminating all the steps previously required to access all their messages throughout the day."

The new IP communications and unified messaging system has also improved the company's communications on location. Each year, half of NFL Films' staff attends the Super Bowl for as long as three weeks at a time.

Traditionally, each crewmember was provided with a temporary analog phone with temporary voice-messaging mailboxes to communicate with other crewmembers. They also relied on pagers and cell phones to communicate, which often proved unreliable in a stadium environment. Although much effort and planning went into setting up the temporary system and disseminating the phone numbers, communications between the NFL Films crewmembers at the Super Bowl and those back home was less than optimal, according to Dave Franza, chief information officer and executive Internet producer at NFL Films.

"Before VoIP, it was a challenge for some to reach us at the Super Bowl site," says Franza. "For example, people might call my regular extension and end up being put into voice mail because they didn't know the number at the Super Bowl site."

NFL Films is now able to extend its headquarters data network to its trailer area at the Super Bowl, making data and voice communications with headquarters virtually seamless. The company lays the cable, creates a "huh site," and installs two T-1 lines for its wide area network. All communications-data, voice and video-now travel over a single network.

Employees operating remotely now have, in essence, a virtual office, adds Franza. "Employees get all their calls, voice mail and e-mail, just as if they were in the home office. They simply take their IP phone with them, plug it into the Ethernet jack, and the phone registers itself with the Cisco CallManager. All user privileges and settings are automatically re-established, including their voice mail, extension and phone quick-dial settings." For more information from Cisco Systems: www.rsleads.com/311cn-253