Microsoft Lync Server 2010Customer Solution Case Study

Global IT Services Provider Completes Client Projects Faster with Communications Upgrade

OverviewCountry or Region: IndiaIndustry: Professional services

Customer ProfileHeadquartered in Bangalore, India, Wipro provides consumer products, IT services, research and development services, and business process outsourcing.

Business SituationWipro wanted to deploy the latest unified communications capabilities to increase employee productivity and enhance customer relationships.

SolutionWipro upgraded to Microsoft Lync Server 2010 to take advantage of enterprise voice and other capabilities that help improve communication and increase employee productivity.

Benefits Respond quickly to customers Improve communication across the

organization Ease administrative functions Offer a road map for continuous

improvement

“By using Lync 2010, we can quickly establish a connection with people to make instant business decisions.”

Ramesh Nagarajan, Chief Information Officer, Wipro

Wipro is a global Information Technology, Consulting, and Outsourcing company that delivers solutions to enable its clients to do business better. Wipro delivers winning business outcomes through its deep industry experience and a 360-degree view of “Business through Technology”—helping clients create successful and adaptive businesses. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, a practitioner’s approach to delivering innovation, and an organization-wide commitment to sustainability, Wipro has 135,000 employees and clients across 54 countries. Recently, Wipro upgraded to Microsoft Lync Server 2010 to provide enhanced communications capabilities to employees to help them enhance their collaboration experience.

SituationWipro firmly believes that technology can help its employees work more efficiently. With employees working at locations around the world, Wipro’s foremost challenge was enabling communication between people who work in different time zones and speak different languages. As a result, Wipro has invested heavily in Microsoft solutions to provide communications and collaboration capabilities that enable employees to work as virtual teams regardless of location. For messaging, the company uses Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. It also recently upgraded its collaboration solution to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for enhancing content management and improving workflows. To take advantage of features such as co-authoring in Microsoft Word and archiving in the Microsoft Outlook messaging and collaboration client, Wipro also upgraded to Microsoft Office 2010.

The most effective tools for enhancing communications at Wipro are instant messaging and presence. Wipro first deployed Microsoft Office Live Communications Server to provide these capabilities. “People really liked being able to see the presence information for coworkers and being able to send them instant messages,” explains Madhusudhan Mendu, General Manager-IT Initiatives at Wipro. While the company continued to use its third-party audio and web conferencing solutions, maintenance soon became very expensive as Wipro continued to expand its business. It decided to deploy a pilot of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in order to experience a true unified communications platform that included conferencing and desktop sharing capabilities in addition to the instant

messaging and presence features that were already available. It deployed the pilot for about 5,000 employees. The company also deployed voice over IP (VoIP) capabilities through Office Communications Server 2007 R2 for about 3,000 employees. These services were primarily for executives and sales people so that they could call each other from their computers by using the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 client. Additionally, it implemented Exchange Unified Messaging so that people could receive consolidated voice mail and email through Microsoft Outlook.

SolutionAlthough the Office Communications Server 2007 pilot was successful, Wipro decided to deploy Microsoft Lync Server 2010 instead. Lync Server 2010 provides enhanced versions of the communications capabilities provided by Office Communications Server 2007—presence, instant messaging, robust conferencing, and enterprise voice—as well as improvements in topology, deployment, and management tools.

Wipro deployed Lync Server 2010 to all of its 135,000 employees in phases. The first phase involved running front-end, mediation, monitoring, and edge server roles in a virtualized environment. By running Lync Server in a virtualized environment, the company was able to deploy more than 20 server roles on two physical servers. “If we had deployed Lync Server on physical servers, we would have needed four times the machines,” says Mendu.

For approximately 3,000 senior managers and sales people, Wipro also deployed

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“Projects are more collaborative as we can stay in touch with our clients on a daily basis.”

Deepa Kanungo, Head of Business IT, Wipro

voice and videoconferencing capabilities. Employees were then able to make peer-to-peer voice calls through the Microsoft Lync 2010 client on the desktop using headsets. Employees also used the high-definition Microsoft LifeCam Cinema or Logitech video cameras optimized for Lync-based videoconferences. Many employees enabled Microsoft Lync Mobile to work through their mobile phones.

In the United States, the company integrated the Lync Server with Cisco Call Manager and connected it to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) so that employees could make outbound calls through Lync 2010. At smaller offices throughout the United States and Europe, Wipro installed Survivable Branch Appliances (SBAs), which are based on cost-effective media gateways hosting the Microsoft SBA software package. The SBA software provided a PSTN connection that offered communications capabilities in the event of any wide-area network failure.

Through the Lync 2010 client, employees now have a single interface where they can view presence, send instant messages, place calls, or set up ad-hoc collaboration sessions and online meetings. Employees also use desktop sharing and whiteboards to collaborate on projects in real time. The company was particularly interested in the interoperation between Lync Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 so that employees could take advantage of enhanced social networking features like Skill Search, which people can use to quickly find subject matter experts in other departments or regions. Because Wipro configured its system with many of its major customers who have also deployed

Lync Server 2010, employees can easily interact with customers on a daily basis.

With Lync Server, the company’s IT team planned to take advantage of features such as the web-based management console to manage the communications solution across the organization. By using the Windows PowerShell command-line interface, the IT team automated repetitive tasks and added or edited settings for groups of users. Wipro also used the Lync Monitoring server role along with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager for auditing and reporting. The Monitoring server collected Call Detail Reports (CDRs); usage information related to VoIP calls; IM messages, audio and video conversations, meetings, application sharing, and file transfers; numerical data describing the media quality on the network and endpoints; and call error and troubleshooting information for failed calls. It also installed the Lync Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager for more detailed reporting in its Lync environment.

BenefitsBy deploying Lync Server 2010, Wipro extended a seamless communications solution to employees and clients across the organization.

Respond Quickly to CustomersRamesh Nagarajan, Chief Information Officer at Wipro, explains, “By using Lync 2010, we can quickly establish a connection with people to make instant business decisions.”

When answering RFPs for new business, teams across time zones can work together

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“With Lync, we can get feedback from a larger group of users, which leads to better change management and adoption.”

Krishna Kumari, General Manager – Information Systems, Wipro

through desktop sharing to provide answers. “Earlier, we used email to collect RFP answers from team members, and we experienced delays and issues with version control,” explains Amit Vikram, Senior Manager at Wipro. “Today our teams use Lync to go through RFPs together and answer questions, which shortens the response cycle.”

Wipro also believed that the ability to communicate in real time broke down a lot of the barriers that kept teams from making decisions quickly. “By using Lync, we could maximize our employees’ productivity by promoting informal communication, which actually helped drive faster decisions,” explains Ramesh Nagarajan, CIO at Wipro.

With the Lync Server federation, employees at Wipro can communicate with federated clients almost as if they were part of the same organization. They could now add clients to their lists of frequent contacts to view presence information and start chat sessions. They can also use desktop sharing and whiteboarding to get feedback from customers in real time. “Because we have federated with our clients, projects are more collaborative as we can stay in touch with our clients on a daily basis,” says Deepa Kanungo, Head of Business IT at Wipro.

Internal projects also proceed smoothly because people have started using Lync 2010 to share and discuss project status. “In the past when we developed something internally, we only got input from a few people who would be using the product, and actual users felt left out of the process,” explains Krishna Kumari, General Manager – Information Systems at Wipro.

“With Lync, we can get feedback from a larger group of users, which leads to better change management and adoption.”

Improve Communication across the OrganizationA large factor in improving communication is ensuring that the right people can connect to each other. With social networking capabilities such as Skill Search—which is available in both Lync 2010 and SharePoint 2010—employees could search for subject matter experts to answer questions. “If I need to find a database administrator or a JAVA developer to answer questions, I can use Skill Search to find them quickly,” says Sanjay Kulkarni, Senior Manager – IT Initiatives and Planning at Wipro. With presence information in both Lync and SharePoint, employees could check the availability of a particular colleague or team member and start an instant messaging or desktop sharing session. This presence information works across time zones and locations, too.

Sales people and consultants who travel also had an easier time staying in touch with people back at the office, because they could connect from anywhere with an Internet connection. Whether they were at an airport, a hotel, or a client site, employees could place peer-to-peer calls or join conferences through Lync 2010 on the desktop without establishing a virtual private network (VPN) connection. They can also use Lync Mobile to stay in touch through voice, instant messaging, or email.

Ease AdministrationWith access to tools such as PowerShell, daily management tasks in Lync Server 2010 were also easier to perform. “With our

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previous solution, we had to configure everything individually at the client location,” explains Prasanta Kumar, Senior Technical Consultant – IT Initiatives and Planning at Wipro. “With PowerShell, we configured or changed group settings that saved us a lot of time.”

The IT team also easily collated information, viewed trends, and diagnosed problems using the Monitoring server and Lync Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager. The ability to manage Lync from anywhere through the web-based management console also made it easier for IT administrators and help-desk operators to be more productive.

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Offer a Road Map for Continuous ImprovementBy deploying Microsoft Unified Communications technologies, Wipro wanted to create a road map for continuous improvement of communications between employees and customers. The company planned to implement voice capabilities on the desktop and through mobile devices using Lync to increase the number of ways people could communicate. “Going forward, we plan to eliminate desk phones and use anywhere, anytime communication through Lync,” says Nagarajan.

Wipro also took advantage of the interoperation between SharePoint Server 2010 and Lync Server 2010 to increase social networking capabilities to drive business. “We created virtual communities for projects in SharePoint and used Lync for discussions around topics or to get quick updates to posted material,” says Vikram.

With a Microsoft Unified Communications platform that includes Lync Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010, Wipro also provided productivity and social networking tools to help extend its business reach.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010Microsoft Lync Server 2010 ushered in a new connected user experience that transformed communication into an

interaction that is collaborative, engaging, and accessible from anywhere. For IT, the benefits are equally powerful, with a highly secure and reliable communications system that works with existing tools and systems for easier management, lower cost of ownership, smoother deployment and migration, and greater choice and flexibility.

For more information about Microsoft Lync Server 2010, go to: www.microsoft.com/lync

Disclaimer:The opinions expressed by participants do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of Wipro. The mention of an organization name, product, or service in this discussion room should not be construed as an endorsement, nor is the failure to include an organization name, product, or service to be construed as disapproval.

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Wipro products and services visit the website at: www.wipro.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published December 2012

Software and Services Microsoft Office 2010− Microsoft Lync 2010− Microsoft Outlook 2010

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft Lync Server 2010− Microsoft Exchange Server 2010− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010