Total PABX, IP telephony, WAN and Mobile solution for Unique World

Company: Unique World

Web: www.uniqueworld.net

Key business focus: Delivery of innovative business solutions that make a difference to Australia’s leading organisations and government departments.

Key challenge: To find a carrier who could provide a fully managed network solution and infrastructure that was scalable, flexible and capable of delivering bandwidth that met business needs and kept up with business growth.

Macquarie Telecom products and services:

• PABX, IP telephony and Business VoIP systems
• WAN integration
• Mobile services including phone and GPRS, ADSL, SHDSL and ISDN
• BTAS Alcatel Office VoIP
• Metro Access Network (MAN) including Quality of Service (QoS)
• Server Co-location Services from Macquarie Hosting’s Intellicentre

Key results: A fully managed highly stable network solution offering flexibility and scalability to meet business needs.

“Macquarie Telecom has enabled us to expand our infrastructure to a more mature level. Business is made easy by their ‘personal service’ model. They anticipate our needs and are proactive in bringing us the right solution.”

Chris Poulter,
IT Manager, Unique World

Overview

Unique World’s core purpose is to deliver innovative business solutions that make a difference to leading organisations and government departments.

Their people are thought leaders, architects, strategists, analysts, designers and trainers. They are driven by understanding their clients’ needs and applying best practice quickly and effectively to deliver business value.

Keeping a tight focus on satisfying customers is one of Unique World’s fundamental business imperatives and its communications capabilities are central to making this happen. Unique World’s ability to conduct business directly depends on the integrity of its communications network.

Unique World recognised that outsourcing infrastructure and services to a specialist such as Macquarie Telecom made sound business sense. They would be able to focus on their core business as application specialists. It would also provide them with cost-effective protection against technological redundancy, staff turnover, access to the right skills and growing security challenges.

Unique World decided to use Macquarie Telecom’s secure Data Centre environment to collocate its hosting infrastructure. This would provide them with the 24 x 7 support and dual Internet redundancy necessary to meet their business needs.

The Opportunity

Since 1999, Unique World has maintained a consistent track record of driving business and operational efficiency for their clients. Unique World’s four practices create integrated business solutions in the following areas:

Enterprise Solutions, Information Management, Interactive and Program Management. In addition to IT consulting services Unique World also partners with Unique World Software, a niche software company within the Unique World group.

With its infrastructure safely housed in Macquarie Telecom’s Intellicentre, the company turned its attentions to making sure the impact of voice & data communications was a positive one.

Unique World was experiencing an increasing reliance on its data network and recent business growth meant the company would require a new PABX infrastructure.

An office move presented the ideal opportunity for Unique World to move to a converged business VoIP solution as it met its requirement for a fully managed network that was scalable and flexible.

Chris Poulter, IT Manager for Unique World said that the company also wanted to work with a business VoIP solution provider who could make it faster and easier for them to connect their businesses and gain the required efficiencies

“Since Unique World’s business is built on a growth strategy, the communications infrastructure needed to easily and cost-effectively scale to meet that growth,” Poulter said.

The Solution

Unique World is very focused on processes that are critical to the success of the business. Its communications infrastructure is regarded as one of Unique World’s strategic assets and essential to revenue realisation.

Macquarie Telecom successfully proposed a fully managed network solution with quality of service integrating the high speed Ethernet Metro Accessed Network (MAN).

The converged voice and data network meant that Unique World would be able to cost-effectively increase the use of its current infrastructure whilst doubling the bandwidth.

Converged platforms offering integrated infrastructure would allow Unique World to leverage technology to improve business efficiency.

“Maintaining a converged network at peak Quality of Service (QoS) requires a variety of highly specialised troubleshooting and performance optimisation skills. Macquarie Telecom have the right skilled people for the job,” Poulter said.

Macquarie Telecom’s prompt turnaround times are critical to any new business implementation at Unique World.

“The new telephone system was put in operation quickly. Macquarie understands business critical needs. We use our phone system to answer technical support queries from our customers as well as for all our internal business needs,” Poulter said.

“The central control panels of our telephony system mean we can configure as we like without the need to rely on fixed lines or any Telco outside Macquarie. For example, we can allocate additional phone numbers to new employees, make changes when employees leave, whatever the business needs.”

The solution also allows Unique World to access multi-peering Internet broadband connectivity, managed security, complex hosting and WAN integration as well as direct connectivity to Macquarie’s data network for Unique World to host its own applications for customers.

“Macquarie Telecom have really understood our needs for client hosting from a managed network point of view,” Poulter said.

“Our communications network plays a vital role in our ability to rapidly respond to our customers. In a business like ours, there is no room for network downtime.”

Results

Through partnering with Macquarie Telecom, Unique World has been able to empower its team by providing them with a communications network that supports collaboration and rapid decision-making.

As Unique World migrated to their new IP telephony system, Macquarie ensured quality of service (QoS) to the WAN and enabled converged voice and data.

By migrating key links to the Macquarie Telecom Metro Access Network (MAN) the existing data network has double the bandwidth backed up by an additional data network with alternative accesses at each site.

The platform allows all interoffice voice and data traffic on the wide-area network (WAN) over common facilities. Running IP trunking between offices has significantly reduced Unique World’s facility and transport costs. As they drive these expenses down, they have been able to reinvest these savings on other business technology initiatives.

Chris Poulter says that working with Macquarie Telecom has given Unique World the flexibility to grow as a business.

“Working with Macquarie Telecom has enabled us to expand our infrastructure to a more mature level. The entire managed network solution has provided us with a more stable and secure environment for our hosting solutions.”

Technology planning is an ongoing part of running a business and Unique World has found the Macquarie Telecom ‘personal service’ model very effective.

“We have one point of contact and with the strong relationship established, we now have a partnership that understands our business, anticipates our needs and is proactive in bringing us the right solutions,” Poulter said.