Sirius Computer Solutions reduces costs, boosts satisfaction through IP Telephony from IBM and 3Com

IBM Business Partner: 3Com Corporation

3Com Corporation is a leading supplier of secure, converged voice and data networking solutions to enterprises of all sizes. With offices in more than 40 countries, 3Com is headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts.

When a product enables a company to slash the costs of a core business operation by 95 percent while also improving user satisfaction, that product will get noticed. Sirius Computer Solutions realized those efficiencies after discarding its stand-alone voice telecom system and replacing it with an Internet-protocol (IP) telephony solution that met the company’s data as well as voice needs.

Sirius, which is itself a nationwide IT solutions provider, began its search for an IP telephony solution in 2006. That was when company leaders realized that the company’s voice infrastructure, based on multiple Windows/Intel processor-based servers with a private-branch-exchange (PBX) application on each, was becoming too difficult and too expensive to manage.

Sirius wanted a unified messaging solution, one that could be centrally managed and support the full range of collaborative applications — email, instant messaging and other Web-based communications — as well as advanced voice services.

Mulling the choice

IP telephony would fill the bill, but there were many competing offerings, so which one to choose? After several months of analysis under the direction of its vice president of information technology, Tony Tomasi, Sirius went with the IBM System i™ for IP Telephony Solution — a joint development of IBM and 3Com Corporation, a Premier IBM Business Partner.

The selection rested on three main factors, Tomasi said. “First, we’re not that big an enterprise [Sirius has about 700 employees nationwide], therefore price was key. We didn’t want to pay for features we would never use, so it was nice that the IBM and 3Com solution allowed us to select features and functions on an a la carte basis.”

Second, he said, “The System i is a super-robust platform; and it was already providing great support for our instant messaging and email applications” — Lotus® Sametime® and Lotus Notes®, respectively. Tomasi explained, “We’d been using Notes and Sametime for years and found them to be tops in capabilities, performance and security. We also liked that 3Com was a pioneer in the open-standard IP telephony technology known as session initiation protocol (SIP), which would open the door to an array of new collaboration capabilities.”

Third, he said, “IBM and 3Com are fully committed to open source computing, and their technologies are fully time-tested in resilience, availability and reliability.”

Full redundancy

Implementation at Sirius, also a Premier IBM Business Partner, began in August 2007, with operational cutover starting in October 2007 and finishing in March 2008. Basic components consist of the Linux® operating system running on an IBM POWER™ server Model 520 (IBM POWER being the newest generation of IBM mid-range server, bringing both System i™ and System p™ capabilities together) situated at Sirius headquarters in San Antonio, Texas; a second Linux operating system on IBM POWER 520 at a different location for redundancy and backup; the 3Com IP telephony suite known as VCX; and the latest version (Version 8) of Lotus Sametime and Notes.

At the same time, Sirius was starting to roll out Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr™, both of which bring new
social-networking tools to the collaboration mix, Tomasi said.

Benefits were quickly realized:

• Whereas it had been taking 15 man-hours per month to manage and maintain a separate PBX in each of 11 regional offices and headquarters — for a total of 165 hours — the time fell to five hours per month for the whole network, a better than 95 percent reduction

• Costs for meeting all of the telecommunications needs for small-office or home-office locations were down 30 percent

• Bringing more business functions into the IBM Power server was a significant leveraging of earlier investments in the System i, with an anticipated return on investment of nine months

• Introduction of full redundancy and failover backup across the enterprise brought enormous improvements in network reliability, availability, resilience, and scalability.

Customer satisfaction?

And what about customer satisfaction? That question was answered by one of Tomasi’s internal customers, Sue Griffin, corporate communications manager. “What’s amazing,” she said, “is the simplicity of using this, the ease and speed of getting a new user up and running with all the necessary communications tools, wherever the user may be. It’s terrific, and we’re just starting to understand all the benefits.”

3Com participates in IBM PartnerWorld® Industry Networks (PWIN), which offers a rich set of benefits to all IBM PartnerWorld members who want to team with IBM to build their vertical market capabilities, expand their partner network and attract customers in the markets they serve. 3Com is “optimized” in the telecommunications industry, which means it has developed further specialization by optimizing its applications with IBM technologies, achieving success with its own solutions and other criteria.

“The IP telephony solution on System i shows how effective PartnerWorld Industry Networks can be,” said John Tsang, 3Com senior director for business development with IBM. “As a program for solutions developers like 3Com, Industry Networks is best-in-class in helping us drive awareness to some of our key offerings.”

For more information

Please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner. Or you can visit us at: ibm.com

For more information about ISV resources from IBM PartnerWorld, visit: ibm.com/partnerworld/industrynetworks

For more about 3Com Corporation and its products and services, visit: 3com.com
For more about Sirius Computer Solutions, visit: siriuscom.com


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