John Laing Uses Polycom® RealPresence® Video Solutions and Microsoft® Lync® to Boost Efficiency by Delivering Quicker Response Times, while Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Polycom,
Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in open, standards-based
unified communications (UC&C), today announced that John Laing, a
specialist investor, operator, and manager of public sector
infrastructure assets, has implemented a combination of Microsoft®
Lync® Server 2010 and Polycom®
RealPresence® video solutions, to provide an end-to-end unified
communications and collaboration solution across its global
operations. With employees dispersed in 73 offices across the UK and six
offices overseas, teams use video meetings to collaborate face-to-face
securely in real time while managing the development risk, project
financing, asset management and operations with its partners and project
supply chain.
John Laing manages 76 privately financed infrastructure projects for the
public sector, ranging from the Intercity Express Programme, the Second
Severn Crossing between England and Wales and the Greater Manchester
Waste Management PFI, as well as transport, health, renewable energy and
special purpose government facilities projects in the UK and overseas.
Employees work from various global offices and often are mobile and on
the go, and need to interact and collaborate with each other across
national borders and technical infrastructures on a wide range of
projects. Key requirements for John Laing included the ability to
interoperate with existing systems and applications, and ease of use to
drive user adoption, as the company looked to improve collaboration
using any device, increase productivity and reduce travel costs. Working
with Polycom partner Wirebird, and technology automation specialists AMX
to design and implement video meeting rooms, John Laing implemented four
Polycom® RealPresence® Room video solutions (including the Polycom® HDX®
8000) at its new London head office and six other conference rooms
around the world. All RealPresence video solutions are powered by the
Polycom® RealPresence® Platform – the most interoperable and
comprehensive UC&C software infrastructure for universal video
collaboration. John Laing is also using Polycom® RealPresence® Mobile
2.0 for consortium partners and employees using tablets or smartphones
while on the move.
The use of video conferencing has helped staff communicate internally
and externally and has become widespread within John Laing because of
Polycom’s integration with Microsoft Lync desktop clients. Approximately
half of the firm’s 1,000 employees collaborate via Polycom desktop-based
or room-based video solutions securely, easily and intuitively from
within familiar interfaces by simply clicking a name on their Lync
contact list.
“The interoperability between Polycom and Microsoft Lync was key in our
decision. Using Lync with Polycom just brings the whole solution alive
to the desktop,” said Dylan Jones, IT Director for John Laing. “People
can either go to formal conference rooms or participate in meetings from
their desk, enabling everyone to talk and see body language, which you
don’t get over the telephone.”
Video collaboration is used at John Laing for numerous reasons including:
-
Management Support Services: Hosting multiple conferences with
dispersed project teams, transforming collaboration across the company
into a seamless video experience.
-
Company information and training on demand: John Laing has the
ability to record and stream meetings and training courses so all
employees can receive training and view company information on-demand.
-
Collaborate in large teams: John Laing uses Polycom video to
communicate and collaborate within consortiums of construction
partners, investors and stakeholders throughout the life of a project
from the initial bidding process through financing, contractual
negotiations and project management. John Laing can be a part of a
consortium and the main investor, but there could be a team of 100
managed by only two key individuals from the firm. Meetings with such
external parties require secure enterprise-grade video collaboration
with managed firewall traversal, provided by the RealPresence Platform.
“We required a very high quality video product that’s easy to use. The
reason we went with the Wirebird design was because they integrate very
well with all the vendors and it was quite an easy choice for us to
choose Wirebird as the preferred partner as they had the knowledge to
tailor the AMX and the Polycom solutions to our needs. A key business
objective was that the solutions had to be user friendly so they would
be adopted,” said Jones. “The combination of the Polycom solutions
integrated with Lync and the AMX control panels all create one
collaborative tool with a familiar user interface. User adoption has
gone through the ceiling with growing demand for both internal and
external video meetings.”
Polycom RealPresence video solutions are also helping to make John Laing
greener. The carbon footprint for John Laing business travel and
commuting over the period July 2011 to June 2012 was 657.5 tonnes CO2e,
compared with 820 tonnes over the preceding 12-month period, a reduction
of 162.5 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in a single year, the
equivalent of taking an extra 29 family cars off the road in a year.
About John Laing
John Laing plc is a specialist investor in, and manager of,
infrastructure assets in the UK and internationally, principally for the
public sector. By combining its skill in the management of development
risk, project financing, asset management and operations with those of
its chosen partners and the project supply chain, it has built an
enviable reputation as a market leader in privately financed
infrastructure. John Laing’s key target sectors include accommodation,
health, transport, waste and renewable energy, focusing on markets in
the UK, Continental Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific region.
www.laing.com
About Polycom
Polycom is the global leader in open, standards-based unified
communications and collaboration (UC&C) solutions for voice and video
collaboration, trusted by more than 415,000 customers around the world.
Polycom solutions are powered by the Polycom® RealPresence®
Platform, comprehensive software infrastructure and rich APIs that
interoperate with the broadest set of communication, business, mobile
and cloud applications and devices to deliver secure face-to-face video
collaboration in any environment. Polycom and its ecosystem of over
7,000 partners provide truly unified communications solutions that
deliver the best user experience, highest multi-vendor interoperability,
and lowest TCO. Visit http://www.polycom.com
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to learn how we’re pushing the greatness of human collaboration forward.
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