More Enterprising Questions about UC
A few weeks ago I offered responses to questions that were raised during a recent webinar – Seven Ways to Deliver Value of UC – in which me and Nancee Ruzicka with Stratecast hosted. I wasn’t able to address all of the questions in my last post, so here’s my response to another group of questions.
What type of training was provided to Sprint employees following deployment of UC?
Training is always a critical component to rolling out new technology. For Sprint, we utilized online training tools and documentation, as well as large face-to-face sessions on our campuses. To date, Sprint has rolled out UC to more than 12,000 employees with minimal issues in adoption of this new technology. In fact, user training was very brief and concise, yet we achieved a very high adoption rate, which we attribute to our employees enthusiasm for the advanced technology.
Can you give us a basic feel or rule of thumb for typical UC costs and savings? Mike, are Sprint’s savings pretty typical?
Sprint will realize an initial savings of $6M, plus an additional $2M in savings will be realized every 18-24 months due to the elimination of PBX upgrades and maintenance. An incremental $1.25M in savings can be attributed to “green” savings such as lower power requirements and reduced emissions. Based on our own deployment and in working with business customers who are considering UC, we have found that our experience emulates projected cost savings of other like-sized organizations.
What is GMPLS?
GMPLS refers to Global MPLS - Sprint’s secure and reliable transport network with reach to 165 countries. Global MPLS is the foundation for enabling Unified Communications as an opportunity to further consolidate communications within the IP network.
What are your thoughts on a greenfield installation for a small business?
Greenfield deployments are easier from the perspective you don’t have to worry about how to incorporate with prior investments. Depending on how small your business is, you may wish to consider a hosted solution for the UC deployment to simplify purchase and deployment. However, you may want more control/customization and might want to consider a managed solution. Regarding our partners, Microsoft is definitely targeting smaller businesses and has plans for a hosted solution. Either way, you still need to consider the underlying network, PSTN connectivity and mobility of the solution.
If you missed the webinar, you can download it by clicking here. I’ll soon be sharing more about how Sprint deployed UC, as an effort to help other enterprises learn from our experience, so stay tuned.
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SubscribeTags: collaboration, green IT, Nancee Ruzicka, presence, Stratecast, telecommuting, Unified communications, unified messaging
