Microsoft Lync Server 2010Customer Solution Case Study

Manufacturer Saves $83,000 by Replacing Cisco with Microsoft Communications Solution

OverviewCountry or Region: CanadaIndustry: High tech and electronics manufacturing

Customer ProfileCreation Technologies delivers highly complex electronics manufacturing services. Headquartered in Burnaby, B.C., Canada, with facilities across North America and China, the privately held company employs 2,200 people.

Business SituationWith facilities across the globe, Creation needed to improve its conferencing and collaboration capabilities to help its diverse team members be more productive and efficient, and reduce IT support calls.

SolutionCreation deployed Microsoft Lync Server 2010 for conferencing and instant messaging, replacing Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express and other applications.

Benefits Reduced IT support costs Avoided future hardware and

licensing costs Increased team productivity

“With Lync Server, the conferencing works well with Outlook 2010, providing much richer functionality than we had with Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express.”

Douglas Besse, CIO and EVP Global Supply Chain and Asian Operations, Creation Technologies

Creation Technologies provides specialized electronics manufacturing services to original equipment manufacturers. Based in Canada, Creation employs 2,200 people in 13 locations around the world. In the past, Creation relied on multiple solutions, including Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express, for communications and collaboration. With many solutions to learn, team members often ran into problems, which severely impacted efficiency and generated many IT support calls. In August 2010, Creation deployed Microsoft Lync Server 2010 to provide a single communications solution that worked seamlessly with people’s existing email and calendar accounts on Microsoft Outlook 2010. In addition to significantly improving efficiency and productivity, Creation will avoid future IT support costs related to communications and avoid CDN$100,000 (U.S.$98,000) in third-party communications product costs.

SituationHeadquartered in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, Creation Technologies is a partner for original equipment manufacturers who require medium-volume, complex electronics manufacturing solutions. Creation serves over 200 of the world’s leading companies in several industries, including medical, high-end wireless equipment, industrial controls, green energy, and security.

Creation’s 2,200 team members depend on email, conferencing, and instant messaging to work together across 13 locations in North America and China. Creation team members frequently meet remotely to work together on product designs, supply-chain coordination, and other operational issues. Prior to 2010, Creation relied on MSN Messenger, a public instant messaging service. The service provided basic instant messaging, but lacked presence and integration with calendars. MSN Messenger required separate logons and did not satisfy the authentication, user list, and security requirements of Creation.

Creation team members frequently need to share their desktop with others to help visually present ideas. Prior to 2010, Creation used a screen-sharing product that required people to provide their IP addresses to the other party, which confused people and resulted in many IT support calls in addition to creating security concerns.

In 2008, Creation deployed Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express, which could handle up to 200 concurrent users, for its audio conferencing needs. MeetingPlace Express has an add-in for Microsoft Outlook, which

is the company’s messaging and collaboration client, however it presented some challenges. “MeetingPlace Express lacked support for Microsoft Outlook 2010, which we began using in 2010,” says Raegan Gibb, IT Operations Leader at Creation. “Team members would have to leave their Outlook 2010 calendar and go to a website or call the help desk to schedule a meeting. Then they would have to send out a separate meeting invite in Outlook.” People could not easily change the number of people assigned to a call, and they had to create new meeting reservations if they wanted to add or remove people. The calendar invite did not automatically get updated, so participants had multiple invitations with different meeting IDs and passcodes in their inboxes, which caused a lot of confusion.

To stay with a Cisco conferencing solution that supported Outlook 2010, Creation would have needed to purchase, install, and deploy the full version of Cisco Unified MeetingPlace. Because no upgrade path existed from MeetingPlace Express to MeetingPlace, this upgrade required all new hardware, which Creation estimated would cost about CDN$100,000 (U.S.$98,000).

SolutionIn August 2010, Creation began deploying Microsoft Lync Server 2010 to provide its teams with a single solution for instant messaging, presence, desktop sharing, and conferencing capabilities. In September 2010, Creation deployed Lync Server to 60 team members, and it expects to deploy it to all team members by December 2010.

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Instead of upgrading and deploying Cisco Unified MeetingPlace, Creation started using Lync Server for conferencing. “With Lync Server, we have a single client that allows me to launch an instant message conversation, start an audio conference, and even share a desktop. I don’t have to bring in different vendors’ products and solutions that don’t really fit together or work with our email solution,” explains Douglas Besse, CIO and EVP of Global Supply Chain and Asian Operations at Creation. “We have one seamless solution that allows us to communicate efficiently anywhere in the world.” Teams can easily schedule conferences from the Outlook calendar through an add-on that is automatically deployed with the Lync client.

Team members at Creation take advantage of the interoperation between Lync Server 2010 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and Microsoft Office 2010. With Lync Server, teams can see the presence and availability of coworkers directly in Microsoft Word 2010 and initiate a chat to go over questions about the document they are working on together. They have the same user experience across all the products. Besse says, “With the new co-authoring capability in Word 2010, multiple executives can work on the same document at the same time. Our CFO can edit the budget section of our Vision and Strategy while I work on the technology section. Everyone’s changes are easily seen and consolidated.”

Using the Activity Feed in the Lync client, Microsoft Lync 2010, team members can provide a brief description of what they are working on each day, and with Location

they can let people know their whereabouts, making it easier for coworkers to locate them. Gibb says, “Location is great for us. Our CIO has a crazy travel schedule and if I know that he is in China instead of Canada, then I can set expectations on when to expect his response.” People are using the Rich Contact Card feature to help familiarize themselves with coworkers outside their direct teams. Rich Contact Cards display pictures that have been loaded into the Active Directory service, and they also show a person’s team leader and all team members.

Creation used Topology Builder for Lync Server to design its topology and configuration settings prior to deployment. “With Topology Builder, you can plan and construct your environment easily,” explains Gibb. Creation is also taking advantage of the Windows PowerShell command-line interface to help simplify the support and maintenance of the servers. Gibb continues, “Having the ability to execute commands in Windows PowerShell is incredible. It helps us easily perform updates on the server.”

BenefitsBy deploying Lync Server 2010, Creation has simplified its communications environment and eliminated several products, while providing greater capabilities for its workforce. Besse says, “The benefits Lync Server can provide for Creation are monumental. It drives a significant improvement in remote and mobile communications while keeping a geographically diverse workforce working together effectively.” With Lync Server, Creation is reducing help-desk costs,

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“MeetingPlace Express lacked support for Microsoft Outlook 2010, which we began using in 2010. Team members would have to leave their Outlook calendar and go to a website or call the help desk to schedule a meeting.”

Raegan Gibb, IT Operations Leader, Creation Technologies

avoiding costs for third-party products, and improving team productivity.

Reduced Help-Desk CostsBy consolidating to a single vendor solution for communications and collaboration, team members have fewer questions about how to execute tasks such as scheduling conference calls, initiating instant messages, and sharing their desktop. Gibb says, “With Cisco Unified MeeetingPlace Express, our help desk frequently had to handle questions about scheduling meetings and how to get things to work with their email client.” Creation estimates that the number of help-desk calls related to scheduling meetings and other communications issues will decrease once the system is fully deployed. It expects a savings of CDN$5,700 (U.S.$5,500) per year and will also avoid additional resource costs as the company grows.

Avoided Future Hardware and Licensing Costs For Creation to continue to use a Cisco conferencing solution that would work with Outlook 2010, it would have needed to deploy Cisco Unified MeetingPlace instead of MeetingPlace Express. In that case, Creation would need to purchase new hardware and licenses that would have likely totaled CDN$100,000 (U.S.$98,000), whereas the Lync Server deployment only cost CDN$15,000 (U.S.$14,600) and resulted in a savings of CDN$85,000 (U.S.$83,000).

Increased Team Productivity By using Lync Server capabilities such as presence, instant messaging, and conferencing with other Microsoft applications like Office 2010, Creation has

helped increase productivity and efficiency for all its team members. Besse explains, “With Lync Server, the conferencing works well with Outlook 2010 providing much richer functionality than we had with Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express.” Remote meetings at Creation are better organized, and teams no longer have to resend meeting invites if the number of expected attendees changes. Besse continues, “Because we have a single communications solution, we are saving significant time at the beginning of every meeting. That may not sound like a lot, but saving 5 to 10 minutes every week on our executive leadership calls help us spend more time on the critical issues that need to be discussed. We can make better and timelier decisions because we’re not wasting time and being frustrated getting our discussions started.” Creation Technologies has moved quickly to provide its team members with a standard set of solutions to improve collaboration throughout the company. Creation has found that the Microsoft desktop and server solutions help the company reduce costs and increase productivity. President and CEO Arthur Tymos says, “Microsoft is a great partner. They have the best understanding of how people work, and they build productivity applications that enable our people to do their best work.”

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“With Lync Server, we have a single client that allows me to launch an instant message conversation, start an audio conference, and even share a desktop. I don’t have to bring in different vendors’ products and solutions that don’t really fit together or work with our email solution.”

Douglas Besse, CIO and EVP Global Supply Chain and Asian Operations,

Creation Technologies

Microsoft Lync Server 2010Microsoft Lync Server 2010 ushers in a new connected user experience transforming every communication into an interaction that is more collaborative and engaging, and that is accessible from anywhere. For IT, the benefits are equally powerful, with a highly secure and reliable 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

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

Document published November 2010

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 Creation Technologies products and services, call (604) 430-4336 or visit the website at: www.creationtech.com

For more information about Jabra products and services, call (800) 826-4656 or visit the website at: www.jabra.com

Software and Services Microsoft Office− Microsoft Office 2010− Microsoft Lync 2010− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010−

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