* CMS Consulting uses unified communications to keep teams in the field in touch
We had a chance recently to talk with Brian Bourne, President of CMS Consulting, about his experiences as a Unified Communications user. CMS Consulting is a boutique firm with about 30 senior consultants, and is a Microsoft Six-Times-Gold Certified Partner focused on a limited number of Microsoft’s core server products. Bourne points out one of the biggest challenges they have as an IT consultancy is “if our people are in the office, then they are costing us money and not making money. But then how do you tie the 30 people together into a team?” He adds, “leveraging unified communications helps address issues of a team that is always spread out in the field.” (Compare Unified Communication products.)
Practicing what it preaches, CMS uses a Microsoft OCS OC platform that includes Exchange 2007 and Nortel Office Communicator phones – its demo environment is also its production environment. The company has replaced its PBX with Microsoft OCS and a media gateway for the PSTN connection, and consultants in the field typically use a client-supplied secure SSL connection to link back to their CMS colleagues.
Collaboration is critical to the CMS business model. Bourne said that by using presence, instant messaging and collaboration tools, “if I have a question about SQL technology, I can [quickly] get to a person and have that expert share my desktop to solve the problem. We could do the same thing with accounting or any teaming challenge.”
Taking advantage of the opportunity to gain more insight via Bourne’s experience as an IT consultant, we asked him about his clients’ experiences with unified communications. He said, “Our clients [typically] adopt this a piece at a time with presence and IM first, then audio and video, then full VoIP as the next step.” He also noted that with the largest enterprise deployments comes an inherent complexity as multiple users are added so a “very staged deployment” is essential.
Our thanks to Mr. Bourne for sharing his observations both as a unified communications user and as a consultant.
