The Tarrant County College District has deployed a unified communications solution from the Nortel and Microsoft Innovative Communications Alliance (News - Alert), according to officials.

 

The Tarrant County College District has been able to improve efficiencies by integrating communications with their existing learning and teaching environments. This has enabled the district to operate faster and also lower their operational expenses.

 

The Innovative Communications Alliance solution allows real-time collaboration from a familiar Microsoft (News - Alert) environment that incorporates Nortel features and reliability. This reduces and simplifies the time taken for communicating.

 

According to Mark Workman, vice president of Teaching and Learning, the faculty will be able to bring guest speakers directly into their physical or virtual classrooms through Live Meeting tools. After the implementation of the new toolset, college administrators will be able to realize tangible benefits like improved quality of work.

 

The Innovative Communications Alliance solution is designed to help in identifying and reducing IT costs while enabling the delivery of high-value services with less effort and over-head than previously possible. The Tarrant County College District unified communications solution provides converged office capabilities using Nortel's (News - Alert) Communication Server 1000 and Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 products.

 

Since the Tarrant County College District already had both Microsoft and Nortel's technology, only a simple software upgrade and integration from Nortel Services was required. Ann Fuller, project manager for the TCCD initiative states that the District is expecting a return on investment through the improved efficiencies this solution will provide in the areas of desktop conferencing.

 

The Innovative Communications Alliance (ICA) was established between Nortel and Microsoft in 2006. Since then it has delivered unified communications to more than 1,200 customers around the world. Nortel and Microsoft unified communication solutions allow businesses to leverage investments in their existing IT, telephony and network infrastructure assets. At the same time, a flexible implementation strategy (to avoid rip & replace) is provided to unified communications.

 

The ICA consists of a portfolio that delivers unified communications solutions across a number of areas like Voice, Telephony and Unified Messaging. Other areas covered include Unified Communications (News - Alert) Integrated Branch, Conferencing, Unified Communications Services and Customer Care Solutions. These solutions make use of a single client and common architecture to reduce IT complexity and provide greater stability than alternative solutions.