Microsoft Lync Server 2010Customer Solution Case Study

Consulting Firm Upgrades Communications Solution to Further Boost Productivity

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Professional services

Customer ProfileA.T. Kearney, based in Chicago, Illinois, is a leading management consultancy firm that serves clients in all major industries as well as government agencies. It has more than 2,700 employees worldwide.

Business SituationA.T. Kearney deployed Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 so that its consultants around the world could communicate more effectively with clients, colleagues, and family members.

SolutionA.T. Kearney upgraded its communications solution to Microsoft Lync Server 2010 to take advantage of more flexible architecture, enhanced video conferencing, and eased management.

Benefits Improved productivity Eased management

“The Skill Search feature in Lync and SharePoint will be easy to use. Employees can view presence information and immediately contact the person they are searching for with one click.”

Kevin Rice, Global Network Architect, A.T. Kearney

A.T. Kearney is a global team of innovative, insightful, and collaborative experts who deliver creative, meaningful, and sustainable results to their clients. Its consultants offer services such as complexity management, strategic IT, mergers and acquisitions, supply chain management, and procurement and analytical solutions. Its consultants work with clients around the world, so A.T. Kearney relies heavily on a communications, collaboration, and messaging infrastructure built around Microsoft technologies to help consultants provide the best possible service and complete projects on time and on budget. The company constantly strives to provide the latest technology to help employees be successful at their jobs, so it decided to upgrade to Microsoft Lync Server 2010 to provide enhanced communication capabilities in a more stable, flexible environment that is easier to manage.

SituationWith 2,700 employees in 37 locations around the world, A.T. Kearney is a global management consulting firm that uses strategic insight, tailored solutions, and a collaborative working style to help clients achieve sustainable results. Consultants perform an array of services, including complexity management, strategic IT, mergers and acquisitions, supply chain management, and procurement and analytic solutions. They offer these services across industries such as aerospace and defense, communications and high tech, financial institutions, pharmaceuticals, and the public sector. Having a range of experts across the world engaged in such a variety of industries and services requires A.T. Kearney to provide its employees with the collaborative tools they need to serve clients, but it must also consider how it can help employees with demanding schedules and travel-heavy agendas to better manage their work-life balance.

“Success through collaborative relationships” is one of A.T. Kearney’s key tenets, and its technology choices have long supported this principle. The company has built a communications and collaboration solution around Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 email messaging and collaboration software and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for information sharing and collaboration. It deployed Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to provide instant messaging, presence, conferencing, desktop sharing, and enterprise voice capabilities. The company also implemented Microsoft Exchange Unified Messaging so that employees can receive and manage both

voice-mail and email messages through the Microsoft Office Outlook messaging and collaboration client.

The company benefits from Office Communications Server 2007 R2 deployment in several ways. With the enterprise voice capabilities, A.T. Kearney employees have decreased their mobile phone bills because they can place calls through Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 anywhere they can connect to a broadband network.

Audio and video conferencing are popular with A.T. Kearney employees. “So many of our employees work at small offices, at home, or at client sites, and the ability to communicate through video conferencing from these locations has really driven them to adopt the solution,” explains Kevin Rice, Global Network Architect at A.T. Kearney. “We recently had a video conference with our offices in India, and our CEO was able to connect from his home.” Employees can use video conferencing through Communicator on the desktop, and the company has enabled Office Communications Server to work with its Polycom video conferencing bridges at the office.

A.T. Kearney is now encouraging people to use the capabilities in Office Communications Server to work together with partners and clients instead of traveling to remote sites for meetings. The company enabled federation to help employees communicate with clients. “With federation, our project work happens more in real time,” says Rice. “If clients have questions, they can see immediately if someone is available and send an instant

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message or click to call instead of sending an email or making a phone call. It speeds up the process and helps us build better relationships.”

SolutionAs part of its ongoing commitment to enhance communication and collaboration and improve work-life balance for its employees, A.T. Kearney decided to upgrade its communications solution by deploying Microsoft Lync Server 2010. Lync Server provides enhanced versions of the communications capabilities provided by Office Communications Server 2007 R2—presence, instant messaging, robust conferencing, and enterprise voice—as well as improvements in topology, deployment, and management tools. A.T. Kearney expects to deploy Lync to all 2,700 employees by April 2011.

The company will begin deploying Lync Server 2010 at its two global data centers in the United States. Employee connections to the Lync servers are load balanced between the data centers, so if a server fails at one location, the other one is available in real time. A.T. Kearney uses this cloud-based application model, where people connect applications at centralized data centers instead of local servers for Exchange Server and SharePoint Server as well. For its Lync deployment, it will install two virtual front-end servers at each data center along with two physical audio-video conferencing servers.

A.T. Kearney employees will continue to use the voice and video conferencing features they enjoyed in Office Communications Server, but with Microsoft Lync 2010 they will have a single, unified client to access all

communications capabilities like online meetings, video conferencing, and desktop sharing. Several enhancements to the Lync client provide more of a social-networking experience for employees. With the activity feed, employees can provide additional presence information for their coworkers. Through the Rich Contact Card, they can see people’s managers and direct reports. “We think the Rich Contact Card will help people do a better job of keeping their personal contact lists updated,” says Rice. “If they see the card each time they hover over a person’s name, it reminds them to complete the information.”

People can also use Skill Search to find subject matter experts in other departments or other regions more easily. Although A.T. Kearney has a skill-based search engine in place now, it plans to migrate that data to SharePoint Server 2010. “The Skill Search feature in Lync and SharePoint will be easy to use,” explains Rice. “Employees can view presence information and immediately contact the person they are searching for with one click.”

With Lync, mobile employees can also take advantage of enhancements that make it easier to travel from office to office or to connect with remote coworkers and clients. In its Tokyo office, A.T. Kearney will enable the Call Park feature for Lync Server 2010. Most workers in the Tokyo office are mobile and visit the office infrequently, so the company has deployed fewer phones around the office and seating is unassigned. With Call Park, the receptionist can place a call on hold and use the intercom to notify the call recipient, who can pick up the call from another location.

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“We gave one of the Microsoft LifeCam cameras to all our executives. The quality is great. We have put this at the top of our procurement list for when people need to order a camera.”

Kevin Rice, Global Network Architect, A.T. Kearney

As more mobile employees use video conferencing from the Lync client on the desktop, A.T. Kearney is evaluating the Microsoft LifeCam Cinema high-definition webcam. “We gave one of the Microsoft LifeCam cameras to all our executives. The quality is great. We have put this at the top of our procurement list for when people need to order a camera,” says Rice.

The IT team at A.T. Kearney plans to take advantage of several new management features in Lync. They can use the web-based management console to manage Lync from any computer with a browser and a network connection, without having to install additional administrative tools. With role-based access control (RBAC), it can define second-level support roles more clearly and have more granular control over permissions for administrators and centralized support operators. “With RBAC, we will be able to create another level of support for our data center in India,” says Rice.

BenefitsWith Lync Server 2010, A.T. Kearney continues to provide the technology that helps its mobile consultants be more productive at their jobs and more effective at keeping the lines of communication open with partners and clients.

Improved ProductivityA.T. Kearney sees an advantage in the unified Lync client interface. Employees no longer need to switch applications for different types of conference calls; with a single click, they can start an audio or video conference directly through Lync 2010, which gives them quicker access to clients

than ever before and means they can resolve issues more quickly when they arise.

The interoperation between Lync Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 will also help boost productivity. Not only can employees see enhanced presence information and start instant messages or place calls with a single click through SharePoint, they also have access to Skill Search, which they can use to locate subject matter experts quickly. “The Skill Search feature is the star of the show,” says Rice. “People will not have to switch applications. They can find a subject matter expert in SharePoint or Lync, see the presence information, and immediately call or send an instant message to get a question answered or an issue resolved.”Eased ManagementWith the more flexible architecture possibilities available for Lync Server 2010, A.T. Kearney can improve redundancy without adding additional cost. By deploying Lync in a virtual environment, it can more easily move servers, applications, and services between data centers without any service interruption to employees.

The IT team can also have better control over resources, which helps them provide better service to employees. “With RBAC, we will be able to more clearly define additional support roles, so we can shift some of the workload from our third-level support team to our second- and hopefully first-level support teams,” says Rice. The ability to manage Lync from anywhere through the web-based management console also makes it easier for IT administrators and help-desk operators alike to be more productive at their jobs.

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“With RBAC, we will be able to more clearly define additional support roles, so we can shift some of the workload from our third-level support team to our second- and hopefully first-level support teams.”

Kevin Rice, Global Network Architect, A.T. Kearney

Microsoft Lync Server 2010Microsoft Lync Server 2010 ushers in a new connected user experience that transforms every communication into an interaction that is more collaborative and engaging and that is accessible from anywhere. For IT, the benefits are equally powerful, with a highly secure and reliable communications solution that works with existing tools and systems for easier management, lower cost of ownership, smoother deployment and migration, and greater choice and flexibility.

For more information about Microsoft Lync Server 2010, go to: www.microsoft.com/lync

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about A.T. Kearney products and services, call (312) 648-0111 or visit the website at: www.atkearney.com

For more information about Jabra products and services, call (800) 826-4656 or visit the website at: www.jabra.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published November 2010

Software and Services Microsoft Office− Microsoft Lync 2010− Microsoft Office Professional Plus

2010 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft Lync Server 2010− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010− Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Enterprise Edition

Hardware Microsoft LifeCam Cinema HD webcam