Sydney Harbor Foreshore Authority
"snomtastic": Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 with snom phones in Down Under!
How everything started
The famed Sydney Australia waterfront, from Darling Harbour to The Rocks, is the jewel of the New South Wales tourist portfolio, hosting tens of millions of sightseers from around the world every year. But as beautiful as it is, it doesn't take care of itself. It is overseen by a group of more than 300 people working at the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA), created in 1998 to manage the one of Australia's most iconic tourist centers.
Voice communications, both internally among the Authority's four locations, and externally with business contacts and tourists all over the world, is critical to the SHFA's operations. Running its telephony service from a TDM PBX was once the only option for the group, but as Internet protocol (IP) and SIP began to emerge, IT executives found it impossible to "back in" IP functionality to an outdated PBX, so they turned to and all-IP environment and the Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The reason: this platform would give the organization an advanced IP telephony feature set, including unified messaging, conferencing standard call features, in a well-known Microsoft environment.
The little difference
Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority IT Manager Matt Marlor knew that the key to delivering the right system to address their needs and fit their budget came down to choosing the right phones. After vigorous testing, the SHFA went exclusively with snom VoIP phones equipped with the snom OCS edition firmware. The reliability, functionality, flexibility and affordability of snom phones were all reasons for the decision.
But definitely one of the most significant benefits for the SHFA's choice came in the form of a resource - the snom wiki, and thesnom forum maintained by snom and its most active users and developers. The snom wiki offers deep technology detail on every snom product and provides customer's access to the ideas and solutions and the forum combines both: snom engineers and independent developers around the world.
The challenge: suit the needs of everybody!
Like many organizations, the SHFA had a diverse cross-section of end users to answer to. Managers wanted certain functionality out of their phone system, while customer service people wanted something else. But the common thread was that people didn't want to be tied to a desktop; they wanted to keep the tradition of a desktop phone while also being able to enjoy productivity-enhancing benefits of Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
Marlor examined several different kinds of phones, looking at functionality, usability and price. Specifically, because he wanted to maintain an IP PBX as a backup system, he needed phones that could run on both systems simultaneously, a rarity in the industry. In the end, the snom phones, with all the advanced functionality needed in a business phone at a price point significantly lowers than the others, made the cut and Marlor and his team set out to test them in real-world scenarios using the organization's new environment.
"The snom phones really blew us away immediately," said Marlor. "And the key was that they could run perfectly on Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2, but if anything went wrong, they were also capable of running the fallback system (the NET VX1200 Voice Exchange for Unified Communications)."
The end result was more than 300 snom desktop business phones delivered to the SHFA for deployment for all employees in all four office locations with snom OCS edition firmware.
After the choosing of the best components always comes the last part: integrating!
To run Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2, the SHFA required phones that integrate into an Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 environment, as well as a backup system. The organization turned to snom technology AG's "snom OCS edition" IP telephones, which are designed to work natively with Microsoft® 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 Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Every snom desktop phone is Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 compatible and can integrate with both Microsoft® 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.
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 screen and a snom phone.
- Easily search for contact names or phone numbers directly from a snom telephone via Active Directory (snom LDAP) search.
- See the presence status of contacts from both the desktop and the telephone.
- Place secure VoIP calls directly from a snom telephone or from a PC, both via Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
But while the snom phones at SHFA were immediately operational on OCS, Marlor also wanted a custom management system which would control elements such as provisioning, firmware upgrades, and phone certification, and which would be user-friendly not only for the IT team, but for the end users as well.
For such a customized management system, Marlor turned to the snom wiki. He devoured the information on the snom wiki and was able to build a management system unique to the SHFA and its needs. Between development, testing and full roll out, the adoption of the new management systems - which Marlor and his mates dubbed "Snomtastic" - took about six months, though the group conceded to taking its time to make sure everything was perfect once installed across the whole network.
Jan Boguslawski, a Technical Product Manager for snom OCS edition at snom, said, "We have our own management system that can be used in almost any type of deployment imaginable, but as a customer, you are not bound to use the existing infrastructure because of the open nature of the platform," he said. "We definitely provided some basic support to SHFA through email and IM, but Matt and his team did the bulk of the work and were able to get the information they needed through the wiki."
Status quo
In the end, the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority deployed more than 300 snom endpoints across its Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2environment. Marlor also hopes to introduce some new phones in the near future.
Some of the immediate benefits include:
- Easy provisioning of new lines, from central site or across branch locations;
- HD audio quality for all desktop phones
- Interoperable fail over from Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2to other environments;
- Customized corporate identity "skins" to enhance the design of the already sleek hardware.
Conclusion
The convergence of telephony and data networks is continuing in small and large organizations around the world, with many believing the de facto standard operating environment will eventually become Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2. As seen in the unique and successful deployment at SHFA, snom phones are ready for that migration and can be used simultaneously with any other pbx solution in the transition time to Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
Should other environments become popular, snom's open access and interoperability ensure that those options will also be available to customers, right out of the box.
Interestingly, while the SHFA project began as a move to Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2, in the end, it became more about the phones.
"For us, Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 has just become a delivery system, almost secondary to the handsets and the features and functionality they can provide," said Marlor.
The Customer:
Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA), Australia
The Task:
integration of Microsoft ® OCS, guaranteeing still high security
The special Requirement:
capability of running a fallback system, integration of many different features on Open Standard IP phones
The solution:
snom phones with snom OCS edition
Download
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