Along with streamlined communication capabilities, Microsoft's Office Communications Server helps companies reduce overhead by eliminating travel expenses and reducing IT and telecommunications costs.
Microsoft Case Studies
Lionbridge is a leading provider of language, content, and technology
outsourcing services. With more than 4,600 employees in 26 countries, the company
wanted to make it easier for employees to communicate with each other, while reducing
telephony and conferencing costs. Lionbridge enabled all employees for integrated voice
over IP, Web conferencing, presence, instant messaging, e-mail, and voicemail by
deploying Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Office Communicator 2007,
and Exchange Server 2007. Lionbridge estimates their savings on Conferencing alone at
US$1.3 million per annum, or approximately $300 per user per year.
Royal Dutch Shell is a global group of energy and petrochemical
companies active in more than 130 countries and territories. Shell had multiple systems
and user interfaces for communications across its diverse business units. Because of this
complexity, employees often depended on telephone calls or face-to-face meetings
involving expensive business travel when other modes of communications would have
better suited their needs. To improve the work environment and to make its employees
more productive, Shell has chosen Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to
provide a single user interface for all real-time communications for its 150,000 employees.
As Royal Dutch Shell enables users with OCS Conferencing capabilities, it is realizing
direct savings in its hosted audio conferencing service. Conferencing is now easily
accessible and scheduled through the familiar Microsoft Office interfaces and users are
readily adopting conferencing using their Microsoft Office Communicator for voice access.
In addition, by using desk top conferencing and with Microsoft RoundTable in most
conference rooms, Royal Dutch Shell expects a major savings from a reduction in the 600
existing specially equipped video conferencing rooms.
Intel is the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker, based on 2007 revenues of
U.S. $38.3 billion. This company, with 86,000 employees was looking for a solution to
promote efficient collaboration for its global operations. Intel chose Microsoft Office
Communications Server 2007 as the best solution to meet its needs, equipping all
employees with Office Communicator for Presence, secure instant messaging and
peer-to-peer communications. Employees in specific roles have are also using the
Conferencing and Enterprise Voice features of OCS, both to replace desk phones
and to provide in-house audio conferencing. In the first year of operation, Intel saw
audio conferencing costs drop by 20% and reduced both travel/logistics costs and
travel’s impacts on the environment.
