TMCnet.com
April 14, 2009
By Gary Kim, Contributing Editor
Royal Dutch/Shell is equipping 150,000 desktops with Microsoft (News – Alert) Office Communicator as the unified communications client, with Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS) hosts in its three global data centers in Amsterdam, Houston, and Kuala Lumpur, says Forrester Research (News – Alert) analyst Phil Sayer.
Under the new plan, voice will be treated like any other application. For most sites, all voice capability is delivered over the WAN. All Shell applications are implemented centrally, so sites must have resilient WAN access. If the sites WAN connection is down, the staff cannot work, so theres no need for local voice access. For emergencies, employees have mobile phones.
UC video use is expected to be “massive,” but with only limited use of telepresence. Shell plans to have only 10 telepresence locations globally but plans to put UC video capability on every desktop and Microsofts RoundTable videoconferencing device in every meeting room.
Federation of presence is key. Shell has a high percentage of contract workers and works with partners on many collaborative projects. Shell sees UCC as not being limited to Shell employees, rather will be extended to all contractors, suppliers, and partners.
Shell has many global virtual teams for which collaboration and information sharing are absolutely essential, and the business case for UC tends to be easiest to justify in large, trans-national corporations.
For many observers, the most prominent change is the elimination of desktop phones, with soft phones being the standard desktop voice tool.
Gary Kim (News – Alert) is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Garys articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Patrick Barnard
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