Microsoft Lync Server 2010Customer Solution Case Study

Gemalto slashes its communications costs by equipping 8,000 of its employees with the Microsoft Lync unified communications solution

"Microsoft Lync 2010 fulfils its role by integrating its presence indicator, instantaneous telephone voicemail and online collaboration and meeting functionality in a single interface that makes life easier for all of our employees."

Vincent Laluque, Project Director

OverviewCountry or Region: FranceIndustry: Security

Customer ProfileGemalto, the world’s leading player in digital security, posted revenues of more than €2 billion in 2011. The group employs 10,000 people of100 different nationalities, working in 43 countries to service customers of more than 190 different nationalities.www.gemalto.com

MissionTo facilitate collaboration between employees in different subsidiaries and to cut international communications and web conferencing costs.

Goals of the projectworldwide development, covering more than 80 sites in countries with radically different telephony networks. To offer new functionality to the users, without changing their working habits.

Benefits Reduced costs Helped create a unified culture Improved productivity Created a more cohesive IT

organization Strengthened support organization

How can exchanges between employees in different subsidiaries be made easier, while cutting international communications and web conferencing costs at the same time? Gemalto found the answer to this question when it opted for Microsoft Lync. This economical solution provides 8,000 of the group’s employees, working in 80 countries, with a wealth of collaborative functionality.

Gemalto, which is positioned at the very heart of digital convergence, supports banks, governments, telecommunications operators and companies to implement secure services. "Thanks to the breadth of our expert skills and know-how, we can create digital security solutions that are designed to strengthen the trust and confidence of our customers and consumers," explains Vincent Laluque, Project Director at Gemalto. Located in 43 countries, with a headcount of 10,000 employees and revenues of more than €2 billion, Gemalto is the world’s leading player in digital security.

In December 2011, the group decided to invest in a unified communications solution. "We had two goals: to offer collaborative telephony solutions to our employees thanks to Microsoft’s technology and to cut our audio conferencing costs by bringing this service back in-house", summarizes the Project Director. A call for tender was issued to select a systems integrator capable of supporting Gemalto on a worldwide scale and offering sufficiently advanced levels of technological expertise. "The main difficulty lay in the fact that we wanted to harmonize the telephone over IP services, whereas every one of our sites was fitted with different autoswitches and connection technology. So we really had to find a service provider capable of intervening directly in the field with qualified engineers", explains Vincent Laluque.

After 6 months of deliberations, Gemalto opted for the Microsoft Lync solution and the contract was awarded to Orange Business Services (OBS). Thanks to the center of excellence operated by its

subsidiary Alsy, which specializes in the integration of Microsoft solutions, Orange Business Services is the "Voice Partner of the year in France". Alsy’s team also boasts one of the few Lync Microsoft CertifiedMasters in France. "Amongst the many telecommunications operators around, Orange Business Services offers the best coverage for all calls, while taking the cost of the destination and the quality of the call into consideration. This makes OBS the ideal system integrator for this project", adds the Project Director.

Harmonizing the platformThe chosen infrastructure is a star network. It extends as far as the data centers on the 80 worldwide sites. "First, a pilot was set up on two sites, one in the United States and the other in France. The first work package included the deployment of voice on a dozen worldwide sites. Since the interconnection modes vary from one country to another, we were able to confirm that Lync met Gemalto’s integration requirements perfectly", explains Laurent Bourseaud, network architect at OBS. The deployment then continued at the rate of two sites per month. The steering committee met to decide on the training plan. «We handed over the headsets directly to the users at the end of the training session. And we activated the PC audio conferencing onWindows 7 and XP during the night», explains Vincent Laluque.

Today, the deployment is almost complete. The group uses two Lync profiles for internal calls and another profile for external calls. The initial conclusions are extremely positive. "Our telephone system has been standardized and harmonized.

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Microsoft Lync 2010 fulfills its role by integrating its presence indicator, instantaneous telephone voicemail and online collaboration and meeting functionality in a single interface that makes life easier for all of our employees."

Vincent LaluqueProject Director

Users can find the right party, contact them immediately and communicate more efficiently, thanks to the new presence and location indication functions. They can collaborate more efficiently by sharing the desktop, applications and the whiteboard, which can be used to copy and paste images and other forms of content. And Microsoft Lync 2010 also provides simple and user-friendly access to a multitude of communications channels: voice, e-mail, video, conferencing, chat, application sharing, etc."

Evolution, not revolutionAnd the users are satisfied too. "We already have 6,000 satisfied users, and soon we will have 8,000," predicts the Project Director."But we were very careful not to change their habits. Users have two options to make a telephone call: their regular PSTN telephone and the IP telephone, which they can adopt at their own pace. Ultimately, all the old telephones will be taken out of service." What is more, the functionality of voice over IP and unified conferencing have allowed the group to significantly cut the cost of audio conferencing, which was previously outsourced to a service provider.

"The group now controls its own communication platforms, a fact that has enabled us to make some significant savings. Microsoft Lync 2010 fulfills its role by integrating its presence indicator, instantaneous telephone voicemail and online collaboration and meeting functionality in a single interface that makes life easier for all of our employees," concludes Vincent Laluque.

PartnerOrange Business Services is the France Télécom-Orange organization dedicated to communications services for businesses all over the world (B2B). It is the world’s leading integrator of communications solutions for multinationals. With the broadest seamless network for voice and data in the world, Orange Business Services is present in 220 countries and provides local assistance in 166 countries.

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

Document published December 2011

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