Large article about the IP Telephony / Microsoft implementation at Shell. This is a huge and impressive project which is just getting started. Implementation involves Office Communication Server 2007, Exchange 2007 fully integrated with the Nortel IP telephony platform …
… Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell is planning a global VoIP rollout with tens of thousands of IP phones that will ultimately run off of a mostly Microsoft-based server platform.
Shell plans this year to begin testing Office Communications Server 2007, Windows Vista, along with Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007, and rolling the platforms into production by early 2008. Shell now has Nortel’s Communication Server 1000 IP PBX running in its data centers, which host around 1,000 IP phones worldwide.
When the Microsoft infrastructure is in place, Shell will start to switch over large numbers of employees to Office Communicator softphone clients, hosted by the Microsoft OCS platforms, as well as Nortel IP hard phones, managed by CS1000 IP PBXs.
“Ultimately, we don’t see the need for separate IP telephony” and Microsoft messaging platforms.That is our vision, but it depends on whether Microsoft delivers,” said Johan Krebbers, group IT architect at Royal Dutch Shell, during a presentation at VoiceCon this week. …
…With the forthcoming voice mail features that will be included in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Krebbers said OCS 2007 and Exchange will serve as the core VoIP and messaging platforms for the company. Nortel will still have a role in Shell’s network for specialty applications such as call centers. Nortel VoIP gateway equipment also will be used in data centers, to connect to the public switched telephone network, as well as in branch offices, for backup phone connectivity. …
