Georgia Military College
snom OCS edition: The Answer To High Cost, Low Feature Phone Systems
snom and Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Deployment Cuts Military College's Telephone Costs 80 Percent.
Overview
Georgia Military College (GMC), a vast and distributed campus comprising a two-year liberal arts junior college, a high school and a middle school, needed to break out of the shackles of its aging telephone system and move into the VoIP world. For years, GMC, headquartered in Milledgeville, Ga., relied upon the service from a local telephone operator. It was simple. It offered little beyond just telephone calls. Additional features like caller ID and others were few and far between. And for the roughly $11,000 in monthly costs, with the additional service and maintenance charges on top of that, to serve all buildings and locations, the price became a hindrance.
Georgia Military College turned to snom technology AG and Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 when it updated its communications system. The migration, which was recently completed, includes more than 350 IP endpoints. So far, Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and snom have been deployed in six of GMC's locations. In the very near future, a full dozen physical locations will be covered by the deployment, as military bases and offices are added.
GMC's current environment is serviced by Broadvox managed VoIP service with direct SIP trunks, via mediation role servers, to each physical location. The switch makes Georgia Military College one of the first educational institutions in the United States to a 100 percent Microsoft® enterprise voice environment.
In addition a Ferrari electronic AG OCS GW has been installed, besides offering a faxing solution to the college, it also provides failover capabilities for snom phones in case Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Internet or the SIP trunk goes down. The Ferrari solution also enables MWI indication with Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 on snom phones.
The snom OCS edition
To run Microsoft® Office Communications Server R2, Georgia Military College required phones that integrate into an Office Communications Server 2007 R2 environment. The college turned to snom technology AG's "snom OCS edition" telephones, which are designed to work natively with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to deliver seamless end-to-end unified communications and drive new levels of productivity and collaboration.
The snom OCS edition is the first integration of an open standards-based SIP phone connecting natively with Office Communications Server 2007 R2. snom OCS edition phones are Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 compatible and can integrate with both Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and a business's IP PBX or hosted VoIP solution. snom OCS edition unlocks a wide range of advanced collaboration and real-time unified communications features in Office Communications Server 2007 R2. snom OCS edition phones are easy to install and configure and deliver unified communications capabilities such as:
- The ability to have incoming calls simultaneously announced both on a desktop computer and a snom phone.
- The ability to easily search for contact names or phone number directly from a snom telephone via ActiveDirectory (snom LDAP) search.
- The ability to see the presence status of contacts from both the desktop and the telephone. Users can see if their contacts are free, unavailable, on a call, busy or any number of other attributes.
- The ability to place a secure VoIP calls directly from a snom telephone or from a PC, both via Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
Georgia Military College's Deployment
While it was the advanced functionality and features of snom phones working in concert with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 that drew GMC into the deployment initially, it was the affordability and advanced functionality of the snom OCS edition telephone portfolio that sweetened the deal. GMC chose the snom 300 which ran less than $100 per telephone, a massive discount compared to the $500 per phone one rival manufacturer quoted.
Drago Totev, associate vice president of telecommunications and network services at Georgia Military College, said it completely cut over to Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in June, with the exception of a handful of old landline phones for elevators and security personnel.
"Aside from the savings, this extends the features of the phone system" Totev explains. Georgia Military College also runs Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007, with plans to upgrade to Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010. Once GMC migrates to Exchange Server 2010, it will be able to take advantage of the voicemail to transcript functionality, which lets users read text transcripts of voicemails in email format. Additionally, because the voicemail is a native part of GMC's hosted solution, GMC can provide all users voicemail without having to pay $3 per month for each voicemail box.
Another bonus of snom OCS edition is the ease of moves, adds and changes. With the previous telephone system, Totev said each move, add or change would require a truck roll and incur additional costs. According to Totev, service charges for repairs, maintenance, moves, adds and changes were never less than $1,000 per month and often exceeded $2,000 per month. Now, moves adds and changes are as simple as plugging in and configuring a snom telephone and the hosted solution eliminates the additional repair and maintenance costs.
The snom Difference
An integral component of Georgia Military College's new telephone system is the SIP standard based SIP snom 300 VoIP telephone. It offers a two line LCD display, six programmable function keys, built-in three-way conferencing, 100-entry address book, auto-answer and do not disturb functionality.
Along with the other phones in snom's portfolio, the snom 300 offers Georgia Military College cutting-edge SIP-based telephones that offer rugged commercial-grade performance, reliability, modern design and ease of interoperability. These factors have earned snom the designation of being the VoIP handset partner of choice for many of the industry's leading VoIP service providers and VoIP, IP PBX and unified communications vendors, including Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
GMC's Totev said that the snom telephones deployed by GMC are simple to use and offer the functionality the facility requires.
"For small and medium businesses and enterprises, the snom 300 is the best to use," he said. "It does exactly what a phone is supposed to do. You pick it up, you dial and it connects your call. It works and it works well. And the price is right. My team and I also received excellent support, which helped us complete the project quickly and accurately."
Conclusion
Through snom OCS edition and its native integration with Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Georgia Military College was able to break free of the aging local telephone service provider and enjoy a host of new features and functions. Additionally, the ease of use of the Office Communications Server 2007 R2-powered snom OCS edition business telephones boosted both productivity and accessibility, while chopping a significant amount -- roughly 80 percent -- off of Georgia Military College's monthly telephone bills. Between the cost savings, the features and the reliability, plus the future-proofing of running on Office Communications Server 2007 R2-based VoIP system, Georgia Military College expects to earn a return on investment (ROI) in less than a year.
Learn more about the snom OCS edition.
Microsoft, Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010 are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
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