Aedas is one of the world’s largest Architectural practice and was named International Practice of the year at the prestigious Architects Journal Awards 2010. The company has developed in recent years from 4 offices with 180 staff to 38 offices with 1,500 staff worldwide. The customer base is diverse including City Academic Colleges, Shopping Centres and Supermarkets, Hospitals, Airports and prestigious projects in the Middle East. The company has concentrated on gaining an international presence and has offices in the UK, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and the United States.
BACKGROUND
Following Riverbed acceleration and LAN upgrade projects designed for consolidated IP Telephony Aedas reviewed the market for IP Telephony and worked with SICL to design a solution that enhance functionality, resilience and scalability whilst eliminating separate voice switches at each site and ISDN costs.
APPROACH
Aedas built a business case based on reduced maintenance, administration and operational costs whilst realising full functionality of enterprise IPT with SIP trunks. Market comparison showed that market leading Cisco Unified Communications Manager was the most appropriate solution. The design provided centralised controllers at two sites for resilience, with communication over MPLS WAN. Providing Unified Messaging, Voicemail, Presence and Conferencing the system added functionality, whilst the savings on maintenance, asset management, administration and ISDN provided a compelling business case.
RESULTS
Post project, the solution met all required aims whilst the return on investment equated to £147,000 over three years.
“SICL demonstrated that it was small enough to care but large enough to cope. Compared with the previous system, Cisco Unified Communication provides easier management, improved functionality and substantial cost savings. SICL has proven to be a very skilled and responsive technology partner.”
Neil Ewing – Aedas, Head of IT (Europe)