Simple steps to Unified Communications
Written by John Leyden
Customers struggling to simplify and integrate their unified communications (UC) infrastructure, or just confused as to where to start, are being offered a leg-up via Siemens Enterprise Communications OpenScale Integration services.
Siemens has been involved in UC for years and with their OpenScale services brings together a range of professional and lifecycle service offerings under one roof that is easier for customers to understand. Marie Bowman, Global Marketing Head for Security and Professional Services at Siemens Enterprise Communications, explained that OpenScale is more akin to a methodology than a conventional service offering.
"Our OpenScale model is used to reflect the stages that a customer moves through when considering and implementing new communication technologies. The five stages are: Evaluate, Design, Implement, Operate and Improve which provides a complete approach for implementing Unified Communications for our customers using our wide range of professional and lifecycle services and solutions" comments Marie Bowman.
This new range of tailored OpenScale UC Professional Services and Integration Solutions, coupled with the company"s OpenScape UC Application, focuses on helping customers to eliminate the guesswork of integrating their UC technologies with their existing business applications and infrastructure.
The offerings build on Siemens" OpenSOA approach, and are designed to allow for deep business process integration into virtually any existing line of business application, seamlessly providing rich communications-enabled business processes (CEBP). Customers can choose different levels of integration depending on their requirements from a suite of UC professional services and integration solutions utilizing some elements of fixed pricing.
The new OpenScale UC integration services and solutions include:
OpenScape Fusion Accessories – This is a fixed price toolbox for the OpenScape UC Application that is designed to allow simpler and easier integration into common groupware applications like Microsoft Outlook or IBM Lotus Notes. It also can enable connection to customer-preferred web collaboration tools such as Cisco WebEx, IBM Lotus Sametime or Microsoft Live Meeting.
UC Integration & Deployment solutions – Taking advantage of the Siemens" OpenSOA approach, the UC integration and deployment solutions are well suited to today"s heterogeneous environments and are designed to quickly meet the needs of customer-specific integration, such as UC-enabled business portals or applications, regardless of vendor. Examples include integrations of communication tools into business applications such as SAP Enterprise Portal/Netweaver, Oracle WebCenter Suite, IBM WebSphere or Microsoft SharePoint, or vertical applications as required. The solutions also allow for customer specific scenarios like high availability or virtualization solutions as options to help customers reduce their carbon footprints and facilitate improvements in cost efficiencies.
This means for example, Siemens Enterprise Communications can integrate a UC solution that leverages an organizations existing environment i.e. desktop, IM applications or, web conferencing using technologies from Microsoft, IBM or Cisco with specific offerings and pre-set points of integration. Design services offered within the service mean Siemens Enterprise Communications is capable of creating systems itself, rather than bolting everything together like a conventional integrator.
All the OpenScale Integration Services and Solutions support a service-orientated architecture and open standards. The technology ties into Siemens OpenScape UC Server but can support any client, IT, or networking infrastructure. Ensuring systems are secure is also a key element of the service offering.
"The big advantage of our approach is that we can support customers existing technology choices from the likes of Microsoft and IBM at the desktop and Cisco and others in the network. We're completely open. " Marie Bowman says. "With SEN"s global network of UC service professionals who are knowledgeable in the integration of even the most complex business applications, customers have access to the deep expertise needed to more quickly deploy and secure an integrated UC solution."
To support this, Siemens Enterprise Communications has grown its solution consultant workforce by 30 percent over two years. The firm employs 150 specialist solution architects and application developers in UC development that local reps can call on for support globally and this number is increasing.
The modular approach of these new OpenScale Professional Services and Solutions coupled with the OpenScape UC Application facilitates customers" endeavours to reduce the time and effort it takes to integrate and secure their applications, de-mystify the complexities of UC, and allow realize significant business value more quickly and cost effectively. If you are considering a move to UC, then Siemens Enterprise Communications have the experts ready to help.
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