Plymouth plumps for Microsoft unified comms system

Plymouth City Council is to roll out a unified communications (UC) system based on Microsoft Lync to over 4000 users as part of a drive to cut costs.

The system is a part of making the council "more agile and streamlining our communications in light of the recent budget cuts announced by the government," said Neville Cannon, assistant director of ICT at Plymouth City Council.

The UC system, installed by NEC IT Solutions as part of a contract of undisclosed value, will replace and consolidate the council's existing communications infrastructure into a single environment across multiple sites. The council anticipates the systems will reduce the current ICT maintenance and operating costs, enable flexible working and support improved communications.

"Over the past few months we have had to reduce our office space by 30 per cent. However, we still need to be able to deliver the same levels of service to the public and our old communication systems simply would not have enabled us to achieve this objective," said Cannon.

"Having considered what we were paying on maintenance and the costs to bring our current environment up to a standard where it could be used for unified communications, we quickly arrived at the conclusion that even with the cost of implementing the new Microsoft Lync technology, we would achieve a tangible return on investment," he added.

According to NEC, the contract is the largest non-Microsoft-delivered deployment of Lync in the UK to date.