Professional Services for
Unified Communication
Communicate more efficiently
and effectively
Unified Communications can improve collaboration in your organization, reduce
costs and increase productivity.
Our Professional Services team can help you sort through multiple options from
multiple vendors and then implement a complete solution, including messaging,
voice, and video, that matches your specific needs. We can help you integrate your
existing infrastructure with new technologies in order to better enable remote and
mobile workers, simplify communications and enhance customer service.
Table of contents (click a page number to access that page)
Professional Services for Unified Communications from Bell ...4 Leverage your Unified Communications services and maximize return on investment ...6 1. Health Check services ... 7 Evaluate your current environment to identify communication shortfalls
2. Assessment services ...8 Ensure a stable foundation
3. Business Strategy services ... 10 Plan the best path forward leveraging past and future investments
4. People and Process services ...12 Get a good start planning your mobile workforce program
5. Technology Integration services ...14 Turn the potential of unified communications into business results
Bell delivers Gold medal performance on the 2010 Olympic Network ...17 Why Bell for Professional Services? ... 18
Professional Services for Unified Communications from Bell
As technologies evolve, workforces are becoming increasingly mobile and geographically dispersed. As a result, organizations are beginning to shift to more diverse and advanced forms of communication.
Unified communications (UC) is about making communication simpler, more efficient and more effective. It combines many applications, devices and
capabilities to converge voice, data and video into a single interface.
Unified Communications services from Bell present a complete lifecycle of offerings to plan, integrate, support and manage multi-vendor, multi-technology solutions. Bell Professional Services experts have worked with key business leaders in many industries to transform and improve communications. We can help you turn the potential of UC into measurable business results.
Our UC services are designed to enable a richer communications experience — for customers, employees and business partners. By unifying all communication applications into a true converged environment, customers will find that decision-making is faster with real-time access to the people and information they need, when they need it. A
successful UC deployment will improve efficiency, productivity, customer loyalty, and employee satisfaction. As a leader in UC and collaboration services, at Bell we implement and use the same solutions we sell to our customers. Our employees have adopted UC tools, including messaging, conferencing, knowledge management, and shared workspace solutions.
With Professional Services from Bell, you have access to highly experienced and certified specialists with many years of
experience and the appropriate skills to deliver consulting, integration and resource services. Our experts provide strategic insights, experience and expertise to help you:
• Assess your current situation • Implement strategies that fit your
business needs and goals
• Address critical business challenges • Maximize the use of your business
processes and IT infrastructure Our dedicated project managers comply with ISO 9001:2000 standards to bring you advanced tools, methods, and industry best practices. With Professional Services from Bell, you can also take advantage of state-of-the-art testing laboratories to ensure the effectiveness of solutions within your IT environment.
Bell has the expertise and experience to deliver the results you need. The breadth and depth of our solution offerings in unified communications are second to none in Canada. Our extensive multi-vendor certification, combined with our proven methodology, delivers measurable business value.
The Professional Services for Unified Communications set offers:
People & Process
• Telework consulting • Transition management • Training services • Resourcing
Assessment
• Unified Communications readiness assessment • Unified Communications architecture and design • Videoconferencing architecture and design
Strategy
• Unified Communications roadmap
• Videoconferencing roadmap
• Unified Communications discovery workshops • Communications options analysis
Health
check
Technology Integration
• Unified Communications optimization
• Unified Communications technology integration • Unified Communications configuration
• Videoconferencing solutions optimization
• Videoconferencing solutions integration
• Videoconferencing solutions configuration
• Proof of concept services • Technical support services
By capitalizing on our network experience, business-centric approach, vendor partnerships and knowledge of today’s
technology, we can develop solutions that not only meet your existing needs, but can adapt to meet your future requirements.
To begin your UC journey, download our Maximizing productivity assessment tool. Once you have completed the assessment, if you would like to discuss next steps or the opportunities to improve your organization’s productivity, contact your Bell representative or visit bell.ca/contact-me to have a Bell representative contact you.
The ability to connect with the right person right away helps to eliminate human delay, simplify communications channels and streamline business processes.
Unified Communications can enable real dollar savings while allowing you to strengthen your competitiveness through faster, more efficient
communications. With UC, fewer people can do more in the same amount of time, resulting in an improved ROI with minimal investment.
Realizing the full potential of UC in business does not happen overnight. Embarking on a successful UC journey requires clear strategies and business objectives to enable you to optimize business outcomes while minimizing risks and rework. As videoconferencing
and telepresence take off, businesses are also looking to expand video to end users and teleworkers as a more productive means for personal communication and collaboration, which entail additional network, security and technology requirements.
Bell recognizes that achieving a full UC and collaborative approach is a journey that begins with enhanced individual productivity, and progresses to workgroup collaboration,
communications-enabled business processes and transformative customer and partner communications.
Our Professional Services team can help you at any stage of your UC project, by providing assessment, planning, implementation and support. They have the experience and expertise to assist
you in gathering requirements, setting priorities, making the business case and then deploying an integrated solution that meets your communication needs now and in the future.
Professional Services for Unified Communications from Bell include: 1. Health Check
2. Assessment 3. Business Strategy 4. People and Process 5. Technology Integration
The following pages provide more details on each of these services and will identify specific business benefits and deliverables that you can expect to achieve upon successful implementation.
Leverage your existing communication services and
maximize return on investment
For an overview of Unified Communications, download our articles
Making the case
for Unified Communications
and
The business case for Unified Communications
.
Unified Communications Health Check Service from Bell provides a rapid and cost-effective approach to prioritizing the most critical issues affecting your communications tools, developing a plan for mitigation, and providing targeted recommendations for optimizing your environment. With our Health Check Service, you will understand what is required to achieve better, more reliable UC performance.
When a health check is completed, we provide a summary report and dashboard results on your UC environment maturity, and your mission-critical applications. The report will help you to prioritize future investment decisions. The scope can be customized to meet your requirements, and may include:
• IP telephony
• Unified instant messaging • Email
• Calendars and directories • Mobile enablement • Web conferencing • Audio conferencing • Video conferencing • Presence management
Building on this evaluation of your UC health, our experts can perform a detailed structured assessment or repair specific problems to improve communications efficiency, to ensure consistently high quality of service and/or maintain business continuity.
Health Check services
Evaluate your current environment to identify risks
and opportunities
Finalize report
Table draft
results
Draft results
Consultations
Kick-off and
discovery
Project management
Quality management
Assessment services
Ensure a stable foundation for your UC implementation
A technology assessment should be the first thing an enterprise performs before undertaking a UC implementation. Bell’s experienced architects and consultants work with you to define how UC capabilities fit into your organization’s existing environment, develop the optimal architecture topology, and design a voice, data and video network architecture to support your
business and its technical strategies and requirements. Our in-depth assessment, architecture and design services can help you turn the potential of UC into concrete business results.
Unified Communications Assessment Services from Bell leverage innovative application layer software to quickly pinpoint the exact location and cause of network, email, and Active Directory problems that can severely impair
your data, voice or video application quality. Our Professional Services experts can also help you ensure that your architecture and network support your existing UC solutions and messaging environments.
Our Unified Communications Assessment services include:
SERVICE
Unified communications readiness assessment – Multi-step reviews that examine the key areas of your network voice and data infrastructure and critical applications to ensure that they are all sound before, during and after deployment of a UC solution.
UC architecture and design – Uses the recommendations from the assessment to define how UC capabilities fit into your existing environment in order to develop the optimal voice, data and video network architecture to support your business and technical strategy and requirements.
Videoconferencing architecture and design – Helps you prepare, plan and design your network for the successful implementation of videoconferencing and telepresence technology.
DELIVERABLE
• In-depth diagnostics of network
performance, IP telephony, Active Directory, email and infrastructure change
• Final report that summarizes findings of current state architecture and provides a list of targeted recommendations to optimize your network infrastructure for UC
• Detailed architecture and network design and fully documented processes for a successful implementation, including product specifications, test and migration plans and cost estimates
• Leading expertise in infrastructure, hardware, and software components of UC architecture design for Microsoft®
Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2, Microsoft® Office Communicator, and
Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 unified
messaging
• Implementation-ready design based on your unique requirements, taking into consideration hardware, software and application configuration
To learn more about developing a UC plan for your organization, download
our assessment tool
How to assess your Unified Communications needs
.
Once you have completed the assessment, contact your Bell representative
or visit
bell.ca/contact-me
to have a Bell representative contact you.
Business Strategy services
Plan the best path forward leveraging
past and future investments
In today’s mobilized world, people expect instantaneous ways of interacting, highly personalized services, and rapid access to knowledge, resources and answers to their questions. As a result, there is increasing pressure on organizations to evolve to an IP-enabled infrastructure in order to deliver a single unified interface to meet all their communications needs. In order to achieve this, organizations need to develop a successful UC strategy.
The Professional Services team at Bell has developed an approach that is designed to help organizations transition voice services in a way that leverages the best of existing resources, while laying down an evolution path for your unified communications infrastructure for the future.
Our Unified Communications Business Strategy services include:
SERVICE
Unified Communications roadmap – Uses a pre-defined, validated process to identify the appropriate functionality and capabilities to deploy and where to deploy them across the enterprise; recognizing, prioritizing and
addressing the strategic, business process and IT decisions required.
Videoconferencing roadmap – Uses a predefined, validated process to provide a clear strategy that integrates
videoconferencing to the larger collaboration suite of the enterprise.
Unified Communications discovery workshops –
Interactive workshops (UC Adoption and Platform Migration) that assist you in moving forward with your plans to upgrade or transition your communications and videoconferencing infrastructure. Our experts can focus on: • Introduction to UC features
• Introduction to Videoconferencing features • Voice and Data to IP platform transition • Email migration
Communications Option analysis – Customer-specific and vendor agnostic, this offer helps you determine the right communications choices so you can proceed with hardware, software and services purchases. Communication choices are related to core telephony, videoconferencing, mobile, instant messaging, web conferencing and other communication and collaboration focus areas.
DELIVERABLE
• A high-level summary of your existing communications infrastructure • Communications requirements for key user groups within an
organization
• Pros and cons analysis of various solution alternatives (comparison matrix)
• Recommended solutions including conceptual technical architecture and value model (cost/benefit analysis)
• Timelines and costs, including recommended implementation phasing • Executive summary presented to key project stakeholders • Communications requirements for key user groups within an
organization
• Pros and cons analysis of various solution alternatives (comparison matrix)
• Recommended solutions including conceptual technical architecture and value model (cost/benefit analysis)
• Timelines and costs, including recommended implementation phasing
• Executive summary presented to key project stakeholders • Pre-session preparation activities
• Facilitated session with your stakeholders and Bell subject matter experts
• Post-session summary / analysis
• Results and recommendation presentation and Q&A session
• A high-level summary of your existing communications infrastructure in a specific focus area
• Communications requirements for key user groups within your organization (personas)
• Pros and cons analysis of various solution alternatives (comparison matrix)
People and Process services
Get a good start planning your mobile workforce program
With the continued growth and sophistication of UC, companies understand that it has a
significant impact on all staff, including the mobile workforce. The growing number of mobile workers increases the demand for UC as a way of bridging the in-office and out-of-office experiences.
Numerous organizations have demonstrated the many benefits of a successful telework program. An integral part of that is
deploying the necessary policies, procedures and user training to ensure a successful experience for your mobile workforce and improve business continuity in the event of disasters or disruptions.
Bell offers a range of consulting services to customers who wish to implement telework and remote agent programs within their organizations. Our expertise includes program design, policy development, employee and manager training, and change
management. Much of what we offer was achieved through our own experience. Today, many Bell employees are equipped to telework and use UC every day, supporting environmental initiatives that lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Our Unified Communications People and Process services include:
SERVICE
Telework consulting – Offers a comprehensive, proven approach to support, from evaluation and implementation to ongoing management, in order to help organizations achieve their objectives and address the potential human and organizational impacts.
Transition management – Analysis, definition and
implementation of end-user adoption strategies, as well as development of tools to support the transition.
Training services – Customized courses or standard classroom courses on customer premises or at Bell-provided facilities.
Resourcing – Provides industry-specific expertise to augment your engineering and deployment teams.
DELIVERABLE
• Assessment and evaluation of existing programs • Operations review based on strategy, process, people,
technology
• Planning and development of corporate policies • Program coordinator assistance
• Customer environment analysis based on your business context, culture, operational structure, etc.
• Structured and personalized customer communication plan outlining change specifications for
• Project launch, user and resource preparation; • Implementation phase or activity communication • Training plan communication
• Train-the-trainer capability to allow in-house training • Knowledge transfer
• Custom training in subject areas specific to your organization
• Specialized resources to assist you with requirements specification, design, development, deployment, and testing
For tips on having a focused discussion about UC, download our assessment tool
Technology Integration Services
Turn the potential of Unified Communications into business results
Successfully delivering on a UC strategy requires carefully coordinated technology, business process, and project management expertise. Our experienced unified communications deployment consultants understand the different components involved when integrating UC solutions into existing telephony and server infrastructures. Whether you are beginning a complete UC overhaul, want to extend UC capabilities for your existing telephony infrastructure, or are enriching your unified communications with video conferencing solutions, our consultants know how to make it happen. In particular, we help customers through the journey from legacy environments to emerging technologies enabled by VOIP.
Our integration capabilities include Microsoft Unified Communications Quick Start services. This
offering allows you to quickly and economically pilot and
experience the benefits of installing Microsoft Office Communications Service (OCS) 2007 R2 for instant messaging, presence, voice with click-to-call, and OCS (open conference system) audio, video and web conferencing for your on-site or remote workers. With a modest investment you can realize improved productivity, and enhanced communication and collaboration.
We can oversee the full deployment of video conferencing solution, be it desktop video or physical conferencing room design and set up.
Bell is best positioned to leverage expertise across many different technology platforms and can be your single point of contact: • We use established industry
best practices to guide our collaboration strategy, implement solutions, and deliver training • We are experienced and certified
in multi-vendor collaboration deployments and technologies, including Cisco/Tandberg, Avaya, Mitel, Microsoft and Polycom. • We offer best-in-class proof of
concept lab services to validate interoperability and performance • We offer best-in-class proof of
concept lab services to validate interoperability and performance
Post-launch operations Solution delivery Solution development Solution design Requirements discovery Project planning
Project management managementService
Quality management
Our Unified Communications Integration services include:
SERVICE
Unified Communications optimization - Provides comprehensive updating services on existing unified
communications platform, to help advance your infrastructure optimization levels. We enable you to offload time-consuming tasks, ensure high network uptime and security, and take a more proactive approach to upgrades, and issue resolution to your UC platform.
Unified Communications integration –Deployment of a range of UC solutions into your business infrastructure to fit your company’s needs and current IT setup.
Unified Communications configuration – Provides skilled resources to help you transition from your old environment.
Videoconferencing optimization – Offers adaptable and scalable way to meet growing videoconferencing needs, in enhancing the return of your existing videoconferencing investments.
DELIVERABLE
• Optimization services that support Voice over IP PBXs
• Recommendations and upgrade of specific hardware or software on systems or UC network • Installation and implementation of new services
quickly and efficiently to minimize the impact on your day-to-day business
• Implementation of required network components • Integration of Private branch exchange (PBX) • Integration of Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging • Integration to existing messaging and scheduling
products such as Microsoft OCS
• Integration to voice services and installation of soft phone clients
• Support for Communicator Mobile, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices
• Configuration of server and desktop hardware and UC software, server applications, telephony system, and mailbox designs
• Recommendations and upgrade of specific hardware or software on videoconferencing systems
• Installation and implementation of new services quickly and efficiently to minimize the impact on your day-to-day business
SERVICE
Videoconferencing integration – Offers new technology platform that creates an in-person experience between people, places, and events over the IP network.
Proof of concept services – Offers a controlled environment for testing and validating proposed solutions and
architectures according to your specifications and business needs to ensure successful interoperability of solutions within your environment.
Technical support services – Provides a range of flexible technical support offerings that provide an extra level of support above and beyond standard plans available through bank of hours or on an hourly basis.
DELIVERABLE
• Installation and configuration of
videoconferencing components from leading vendors such as Tandberg, Polycom, and Cisco • Implementation of required videoconferencing
solution such as: telepresence, multi-purpose room systems, desktop videoconferencing
• Demonstration of how new technologies will work within your current environment
• Recommendations to ensure successful production deployment
• Supporting documentation and transfer of information, methods, and techniques used • Access to highly technical and specialized
resources to resolve technical problems as your implementation evolves
To learn more about how new convergence applications can boost productivity,
download our white paper
MPLS: Paving the path to Unified Communications
.
Bell, a premier national partner and the exclusive telecommunications partner to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, is proud to have delivered the most-watched Winter Games in history to Canada and the world. From February 12 to 28, 2010, every image seen on TV, every story read around the world and every real-time score transmitted from the Games traversed a communications solution designed and delivered by Bell. With so much activity, it was critical for VANOC to implement a robust and secure website and network infrastructure. Bell’s role was to safeguard the Bell Olympic Network and the vancouver2010.com web portal from virtual intruders, equipment malfunctions, human error and
natural disasters.
Leading up to the Games, Bell Professional Services conducted Vulnerability and Penetration Testing on all facilities to ensure the right measures were in place for securing the core infrastructure from a potential cyber attack. Bell also built in
disaster recovery and business continuity plans ahead of the Games to prevent disruptions.
As a result, the Bell Olympic network statistics proved extraordinary: • 1 trillion packets of data traversed
Bell’s Vancouver network
• 90 million minutes of mobile voice traffic
• 30 million megabytes of mobile data • 65 million mobile text messages sent
and received
• 750,000 calls made from 6,000 landline VOIP phones
• 4.9 billion bytes of data delivered to the Internet on behalf of the Games • 1.2 million metres of Cat5 cabling
installed to support 31,000 Ethernet ports
• 300 million people visited
vancouver2010.com – representing 1.1 billion page views
• An Olympic record-setting 24 billion bps of capacity connected Games broadcasters to the world
• 300 billion bps delivered to connect all venues for broadcast to the International Broadcast Centre
