JSE-listed Square One Solutions Group, a Mitel-accredited platinum partner in southern Africa, has been awarded a contract by Engineering and Projects Company (EPC) to design and install a Mitel Internet Protocol (IP) telephony solution at its headquarters in Sunninghill, Johannesburg. EPC, one of the country's fastest-growing engineering and projects organisations, was formerly known as Grinaker-LTA Process Engineering.
"During our head office expansion, which involved adding a complement of 35 people to a second building within the office park, it was found our existing PABX lacked the scalability to accommodate the additional capacity," said EPC IT manager, Ian van der Merwe.
"As a result, various options were examined for establishing the most cost-effective and reliable means of providing telephone and fax services to the new remote office. These included purchasing a new PABX, adding further modules to the existing PABX or investing in a next-generation IP telephony system," added Van der Merwe.
"The latter option had strategic value for the future growth of the organisation and Square One was approached to design and implement this solution with Mitel being chosen as the preferred supplier," said Luca Ambrosi, Square One Project Manager.
The first phase of the project entailed the deployment of a Mitel 3300 IP telephony solution connecting to the remote office via a Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure and providing the remote users with Mitel IP telephones. The solution is inherently scalable, supporting in excess of 1 400 users as well as catering for voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) connectivity for inter branch communication. In addition, the solution provides a number of value-added applications such as voice mail to e-mail, audio and video conferencing and collaboration, mobile extensions and customer contact centre functionality which can be enabled as and when required.
"After analysing all of these options, and bearing in mind our future strategy around VOIP, the Mitel solution proposed by Square One was the most cost-effective. At the same time, it also catered for the realisation of our future intentions with VOIP," said Van der Merwe.
"This exercise has provided us with a foundation upon which we can, in a second phase, begin moving the remaining 350 staff telephone users onto the Mitel IP telephony solution," concluded Van der Merwe.
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