Content provided in partnership with

Technology Industry

Communications united under a sinole platform; college adds VoIP and instant-messaging capabilities for its five campus locations - Internet - Abitibi-Temiscamingue College uses RDC Technologies' Com4IP

Communications News, June, 2003

Unifying and securing corporate-wide communications is becoming an increasingly important issue, especially for those organizations with multiple branch offices and/or a highly mobile workforce. One important issue for these enterprises is the deployment of communications tools over multiple platforms--e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging (IM)--in terms of buying, training and maintaining different software solutions and equipment.

Another issue is the need to use IP to send and receive voice mail/e-mail. Finally, many enterprises are still either blocking access to external IM services due to security concerns, or they do not have an internal infrastructure to support the technology.

Most Popular Articles in Technology: An overview of continuous data protection; Why all those current ratings?; Many countries now have a mobile penetration rate above 100%, report says; The Tata Group's big telecom gamble: VSNL's recent acquisition of Tyco ...; MEASURING BANK BRANCH EFFICIENCY USING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS: MANAGERIAL ...; More »

Abitibi-Temiscamingue College (ATC) is an institution that has resolved many of these issues. Founded in 1967, ATC incorporates five campuses in northern Quebec, Canada, with an enrollment of 2,600 regular, and approximately 1,000 continuing-education students. The college also has an administrative staff of 125, and 250 instructors spread across the five campuses.

Last year, the college installed Com4IP, a unified communications and office productivity software solution from Quebec-based RDC Technologies. "At the time, we were having a problem with our e-mail servers and in the process of trying to find a solution to that problem," recalls Sylvain Blais, IT director for the college. "Some of the issues we were facing included a need to better manage our employee and staff contact database, eliminate our disparate telephone-answering systems, and implement a single e-mail solution."

ATC was using various software programs, including Microsoft Outlook, Netscape Navigator and Eudora. It also wanted to reduce long-distance communications charges. The college already had an IP infrastructure over its LAN for videoconferencing and wanted to extend this to include telephone and fax communications. Last, but not least, the college wanted to encourage the use of IM as a productivity-enhancing tool.

According to Blais, the Com4IP solution was selected because of its voice-over-IP (VolP) capabilities; scan to fax, e-mail or printer; voice mail; and centralized contact database management, as well as because of its intuitive, user-friendly interface. In addition, the solution offered automatic and transparent encryption/ compression of documents, e-mails, voice mail and IM over IP--within a highly secure 448-bit environment.

When an e-mail or voice mail is dispatched, the software compresses and automatically encodes the message without any further input from the user. "One of the biggest benefits we've been able to derive from this security has been in promoting the use of IM among our staff members," notes Blais. "We gained IM capabilities, and the level of security that was necessary to help encourage the use of this tool.

"One of our biggest problems was maintaining our contact database," he adds. "We hire between 40 to 60 new teachers throughout the course of the year, making it difficult to manage and maintain an up-to-date contact database. We now have a centralized and electronic contact database that is easily updated and accessible to all."

The solution also allowed the college to standardize its e-mail platform across the five campuses, as well as address the issue of its multiple-telephone answering system. In addition, communications between campuses involved long-distance charges and Blais needed a solution that could leverage the IP infrastructure he had implemented in order to reduce these costs.

"We now have one telephone system with voice mail for all, and we save on long-distance charges by using the software's VoIP and a fax feature over our corporate LAN," he offers. "It's an excellent alternative to upgrading to a larger PBX."

The installation and configuration of the communication server, five fax servers (one for each campus), and Com4IP clients on 1 l0 workstations was completed within three weeks. This included the overhaul of the systems that were currently in use by the college.

"It took approximately three months before the software was fine-tuned and completely adapted to our size of environment," Blais points out. "Once that was out of the way, the product proved to be robust and we've had no problems with its performance."

In addition to uniformity, the software has enabled ATC to reduce the costs associated with the implementation of multiple communications software solutions, resulting in substantial savings in equipment, training and maintenance. The college also reduced its fax lines and machines from eight to five for immediate savings in equipment and maintenance costs.

For more information from RDC Technologies: www.rsleads.com/306cn-262

Technology Industry

Communications united under a sinole platform; college adds VoIP and instant-messaging capabilities for its five campus locations - Internet - Abitibi-Temiscamingue College uses RDC Technologies' Com4IP

Communications News, June, 2003

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Business

Most Popular Articles in Technology

Most Popular Publications in Technology