Microsoft Office SystemCustomer Solution Case Study

Stratos Global cuts costs, enhances collaboration with Microsoft Office Communication Server

OverviewCountry or Region: CanadaIndustry: Telecommunications

Customer ProfileStratos Global delivers voice, data and IP communications to remote clients around the world.

Business SituationStratos’ dispersed teams often collaborate over the phone, which was driving up the cost of long distance charges. The company also wanted to find ways to make remote teams feel better connected during meetings.

SolutionTo improve the quality of communications and reduce costs, the IT team recommended that Stratos upgrade to Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Enterprise Edition.

Benefits Unified Teams Cost Savings Enhanced Client Relationships

“We are demonstrating that we are on the cutting edge, using modern technology, which a lot of our customers appreciate. When staff conduct video calls with customers, while sharing documents over the web, our interactions are even more meaningful.”Stratos Global delivers voice, data and IP communications to clients around the world. Working from offices based in several different countries, the company’s employees provide vital communications services to very remote and harsh environments. Stratos’ dispersed teams often collaborate over the phone, which was driving up the cost of long distance charges. The company also needed to find ways to make remote teams feel better connected during meetings. To improve the quality of communications and reduce costs, the IT team recommended that Stratos upgrade to Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Enterprise Edition. Now, employees are working together more efficiently by using video, voice and web meeting capabilities, which has enabled the

SituationFounded in 1985, Stratos Global offers a range of mobile and fixed satellite, microwave and wireless services to more than 20,000 customers around the world. The company has corporate offices in St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, and Bethesda, Maryland, US, as well as 35 satellite offices worldwide.

Stratos employees strive to provide government agencies, military forces, NGOs, first responders and other organizations with the best possible products and services. Several major media networks – including BBC, Al-Jazeera, and SABC – rely on the Stratos infrastructure to send news reports from conflict zones and other high risk environments. “We work in a very competitive industry. Our sales and customer support teams have to be agile, responsive and efficient to maintain a high rate of client satisfaction. This means we are always looking to adopt the latest technologies to give staff the tools they need to maintain that cutting edge,” says Marc Harris, Infrastructure Analyst, Stratos Global.

Because the company supports customers based in sites around the globe, it employs a workforce that is dispersed across several different continents. The company’s IT, Finance, Marketing and HR employees work in main hubs located in the US, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands. Other employees, like frontline sales and customer support

staff, work from various remote locations.

With teams working at different offices across multiple time zones, knowing when to contact someone was very challenging, inevitably creating a lot of telephone tag. This was also driving up the cost of the company’s long distance phone bill.

The company’s senior leadership team also wanted to provide employees with more opportunities to effectively interact with each other during remote meetings. With most of the company’s meetings being collaborative in nature, the IT team knew they needed the latest technology to provide the best sound and video quality during conference calls. They also needed to turn meetings into opportunities for teams to work on documents together in real time.

SolutionTo ensure they had the most sophisticated communications infrastructure in place, Harris recommended that Stratos adopt Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Enterprise Edition, a platform for instant messaging, audio, video and web conferencing and enterprise voice. The company was already using Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003, an instant messaging server, but the upgrade would provide them with the ability to leverage more voice and video capabilities.

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“Employees were already embracing the instant messaging capabilities we had in place,” says Harris. “Because we're so globally dispersed, I immediately recognized that we could benefit from the expanded capabilities that the newer platform offers.”

After successfully piloting the solution within the IT department, Stratos is now rolling out the new platform to the company’s 650+ employees – new users are added almost daily.

Stratos is using the platform to bring people together with audio, video and web conferencing. Presence features in OCS 2007 R2 allow employees to contact people based on their up-to-date availability information, which prevents staff from trying to get in touch with people who are busy. That way if an employee sees that a person they are trying to reach is on a call, all they have to do is send a tag that will let them know when that person is free.

With the federation feature, Stratos employees are able to view presence status, make peer to peer voice calls, and share instant messages with other Microsoft OCS users outside the corporate network. This is a key advantage when communicating with large, international customers. On a regular basis, Stratos’ sales team now make peer to peer voice calls with a major oilfield services company without incurring long distance charges. Stratos was able to not only

control costs, but also save time by avoiding “telephone tag” during the implementation stage of a complex project.

The platform integrates video conferencing into the unified Microsoft Communicator client and allows for interoperability with third-party Polycom systems. This means Stratos can use roundtable cameras during meetings, so that they can always see the person who is talking, which makes the experience for remote attendees more engaging. The platform also makes web conferencing easy for staff to share, edit and review documents, even when there is an ocean between them.

BenefitsWith Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Enterprise Edition in place, distributed teams are collaborating more effectively, improving productivity while reducing costs and enhancing client relationships.

Unified TeamsStaff is now using the solution to help mobilize a global work force and enable them to communicate anywhere, anytime with colleagues, clients, and partners. From sales reps being able to stay in constant contact with customers to co-workers communicating together via video conference, OCS helps the company foster a stronger culture of collaboration. For example, the enhanced video conferencing

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capabilities allow Harris, based in the Newfoundland office, to work more closely with other IT personnel based in Australia, Netherlands and the US.

The enhanced video conferencing and web meeting capabilities also proved to be a great benefit to the company. By unifying distributed teams, Stratos employees are working together much more efficiently: With web meeting capabilities, staff working in different locations can easily make changes to spreadsheets and other documents, as if they were working in the same office. Video conferencing also allows people connecting to a group meeting remotely feel more like part of the team as they are now able to see the entire room.

“I’ve worked with our IT person in Australia for five years, but I've only met him in person once. It’s a simple thing, but it’s great being able to build stronger rapport between our global teams by putting a friendly face to the name using the video conferencing feature of OCS,” says Harris. “Video calls give us that extra layer of communication that allows us to develop a closer working relationship and come up with solutions together more easily than if we were just relying on phone calls or emails.”

Cost SavingsBecause the new platform allows employees to make Voice-Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone calls using Stratos’ existing infrastructure, the company can reduce long

distance charges. This results in a big savings because employees often have one- to two-hour long meetings over the phone with staff based in other countries.

Enhanced Client RelationshipsNot only does OCS allow employees to communicate better internally, it is allowing staff to build critical client relationships. For example, a Stratos sales representative uses OCS to conduct video calls, as well as web meetings, with one of their largest clients.

“We are demonstrating that we are on the cutting edge, using modern technology, which a lot of our customers appreciate. When staff conduct video calls with customers, while sharing documents over the web, our interactions are even more meaningful,” says Harris.

In the future, Harris expects OCS 2007 R2 to help generate more sales. With the platform, staff can be reached via their desk phone number, even if they are away from the office and using a mobile phone. This means that potential and current clients will be able to contact the sales team more easily. Staff members no longer have to risk losing a deal because they couldn’t be reached right away.

“With more responsive sales teams and richer communications capabilities for all staff, OCS will help Stratos maintain a leadership position

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in a very competitive environment,” says Harris.

Microsoft Office SystemThe Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to: www.microsoft.com/office

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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 Stratos Global products and services, visit the website at: http://www.stratosglobal.com/

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published January 2011

Software and Services Microsoft® Office Communications

Server 2007 R2 Enterprise Edition