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Matrix say these projects, valued at almost £1 million combined, will realise significant financial savings for the Trusts and enable them to provide cost-effective advanced communications services to small branch practices and individual home workers for the first time.

“The new Mitel VoIP system enables the Islington Primary Care Trust to benefit in a variety of ways. We now have enhanced features and better sound quality and we are finding it easier and quicker to provide and support new telephone services with a more resilient system. Most importantly, our staff will benefit from mobile working and home working capabilities with the new solution,” said Andy McClintock, Director of ICT Shared Services at Islington Primary Care Trust. “In addition to these benefits, we are also seeing cost savings with the IPT system as we disengage from our legacy managed service contract using BT FeatureNet and embark upon a pan Trust modernisation of our wide area network infrastructure”

“At Whittington Hospital, we wanted to improve the telecommunications services for patients and staff and we saw VoIP as a promising solution,” said Andi King, Telecommunications Services Manager, Whittington Hospital. “Upgrading our PBX system would not have allowed us the improved services we wanted for our patients, the flexibility and functionality the Mitel IP Telephony offers, enables us to meet our improved service goals,” said King.

“The Trusts are realising the many benefits of deploying VoIP – mainly cost and usability for the thousands of people using the new systems,” said Neil Sturgess, Head of Voice for Matrix Communications. “With the IPT solutions, the Trusts can ensure patient support and care is improved, home working is more feasible for staff and operating costs are lower than ever before.”

The Solutions feature greater network availability, reduced cost and enhanced voice applications

The Camden and Islington solution is based upon the Mitel 3300 Integrated Communications Platform (ICP) and is provided by Matrix Communications along with a range of IP Phones and management tools. The Mitel 3300 ICP supports over 500 telephony features for the Trusts, enabling mobile working for staff members, better call quality and greater network availability at a reduced cost.

The Whittington Hospital NHS Trust solution is based upon the Mitel 3300 LX controller platform, provided by Matrix Communications, and will cover 2,500 users with IP phones and features within the hospital over the next three to four years. The flexibility, ability to develop services and migrate smoothly are benefits the hospital is already realising.

Actimax, based at Basildon in Essex, has recently won an array of awards for its quality service to customers but this time it has been rewarded for how it trains and motivates its staff. It won the Small Company Award at the first learndirect Regional Achievement in Learning (REAL) Awards. Actimax Director Sharon Massey was presented with the East of England Development Agency-sponsored award by Fame Academy singing coach David Grant.

The judging panel was impressed by Actimax’s determination to ensure all staff had access to training opportunities. Each year the company allocates a £50,000 budget to ensure all staff get the appropriate training to develop their skills and expand on their capabilities.

Ms Massey cites a case in which a member of staff was re-energised by the offer of training for another role within Actimax. She said: “One of our receptionists was becoming disillusioned with the limitations of her job. We didn’t want to lose her experience and skills, so we encouraged her to up-skill and gave her the opportunity to do some training with learndirect. “She really rose to the challenge, and now she’s in charge of managing the websites for the company and is much happier in her role.

“We strongly believe that by investing in employees’ training and personal development, we’re investing in the company. It helps us retain and motivate staff, and gets the best out of the people who work at Actimax.”

Actimax staff are all encouraged to undertake learndirect courses in spreadsheets, word processing and databases to a nationally recognised qualification. Ms Massey added: “The idea is that our employees get to add to their CV and we get the benefit of their improved IT expertise and efficiency.”

Rachel Dunn, Project Manager at the Basildon Foyer Bisi Centre, the learndirect centre where Actimax staff undertake their training, said: “Actimax fully understands that employees require ongoing training and development to maintain their enthusiasm, motivation and performance. The results speak for themselves.”

Hilary Clifford, Head of Ufi East, added: “For small or medium-sized businesses, the expense and time involved in training can make it extremely difficult to fit in. Actimax is a great example of a business showing enthusiasm and commitment.”

Organised by Ufi, the company behind learndirect, the REAL Awards are designed to celebrate the achievements of learners, employers and learndirect learning centres across the East of England.

The two solutions, TASKE Contact and myTASKE Reporter, from TASKE Technology, offer business analysis and reporting tools, providing complete visibility of the contact centre environment. Businesses can monitor and manage resources in real-time, and dynamically respond to changes in customer demand to optimise resources and ensure service levels are successfully delivered. “Business today is growing ever more customer-focused, making the contact centre central to the success of many organisations. Our partnership with TASKE gives customers insight into and control over this vital resource,” explains Tim Webb, general manager of Toshiba BCD. “The TASKE reporting tools provide a detailed real-time view of the customer experience and the resource available, allowing managers to fine tune the contact centre to improve business communications and control operational costs.” TASKE Contact is designed for the formal contact centre environment with up to 360 agents. It provides real-time reporting on key contact centre resources – agents and queues – giving managers the ability to respond immediately to changing call volume and agent availability. This helps ensure service levels are continually monitored and make the business more responsive.

Additional features include: - Remote browser-based management capabilities - Cradle-to-grave reporting of all calls - Adjustable replay of ACD activity myTASKE Reporter is an informal contact centre solution for up to 50 agents. It has over 150 standard reports to monitor service levels, agent performance, or trends in call volume which can be viewed from any internet connection via a secure browser-based system.

Further features include: - Historical reporting on agents, queues, extensions and trunks - Views of every inbound, outbound, and extension-to-extension call - Call management on all extensions whether agent phones or not Both solutions benefit from TASKE Call Visualizer, which allows managers to review and improve the customer experience. It provides a unique timeline of every call handled. Managers can then drill down into each event of every call, to see the amount of time a caller was on hold or the number of times a caller was transferred, to gain a granular view of call handling techniques. The two TASKE solutions are available for the complete Toshiba Strata CTX and CIX PBX range, and complement Toshiba’s existing management system, Insight. The TASKE Management solutions are available immediately.

The new OfficeServ 7200 offers businesses a complete solution for mission-critical communications. In addition to a no-compromise voice solution it is pre-configured for converged data communications and includes a fully featured security firewall, intrusion detection/prevention, policy manager and packet shaper.

OfficeServ 7200 is being shown for the first time at the Convergence Summit 2005 from 6–7 September and its launch marks a significant milestone in the development of Samsung’s portfolio. This state of the art solution will be welcomed by voice resellers looking to tap further into the enormous potential of the data side of the converged market. By deploying both a firewall and an intrusion detection/prevention system (IDS) the OfficeServ7200 is particularly strong on network security. The IDS not only monitors network traffic but reports attempted security breaches to the network manager by way of an alarm.

In addition to the WIM module the LAN Interface Module (LIM) can be operated either as a managed layer 3 or an unmanaged layer 2 switch. In either case the technology means that voice will always be automatically prioritised over data connections, so even if the user’s system is experiencing heavy data traffic, OfficeServ 7200 will optimise the quality of all voice calls.

The OfficeServ 7200 of course also provides all of the telephony features and rich functionality necessary for mobility solutions and home working that Resellers have come to expect from Samsung’s OfficeServ suite. All current handsets and application software are supported, there is the option of using SIP, H.323(v4), Spnet and signalling. The system is rack mountable and all interfaces presented at the front of the 7200 are RJ45. Voicemail and auto-attendant functionality is provided with the SVMi20e module and a new 16 port combination module provides 8 DLI and 8 SLI interfaces for a flexible mix of digital and analogue extensions.

OfficeServ 7200 can also be programmed via a web browser and is designed to exchange alarm information with a system manager and to have software upgraded through HTTP and TFTP.

In short the OfficeServ 7200 enables enterprises and their employees to securely access the full range of internal IT systems over a non-secure network. Commenting on the new launch, sales and marketing director Ali Zartash-Lloyd said: “We are very excited by this latest example of leading edge technology from Samsung. It offers huge opportunities for Samsung resellers to enter lucrative new markets, allowing both data and voice specialist resellers to diversify into the brave new world of convergence.”

Hot spots allow travellers’ to access the internet through antennae in their laptop computers, but many users are failing to take advantage of the technology.

The study found a staggering 75% said they welcome the chance to be out of contact while travelling.

The teaming with Global Crossing enables the delivery of IP voice services on the Global Crossing MPLS-based global IP network. The network was designed for the convergence of voice, video and data and delivers services to 500 cities around the world. This high quality IP network infrastructure enables the delivery of the TeleWare feature-rich intelligent communications services for IP Connectivity, IP Centrex Voice Services and value-added application services such as personal numbering, manager/secretary working, unified communications and team working.

“Large enterprises have enjoyed the benefits of IP Telephony and applications for many years. Now, by bringing together IP networking and hosted services into a compelling package, we are bringing these same benefits to medium and small enterprises,” said Anthony Christie, Global Crossing Chief Marketing Officer. “We are delighted to be able to offer resellers a true business-class hosted service that provides their end-users with the resilience and breadth of application features they require today and which is flexible enough to cater for future requirements.”

Steve Haworth, Group Strategy Director for TeleWare Plc, said, “For the SME, this solution reduces capital expenditure and enables the company to grow at a predictable ongoing cost without having to worry about upgrading or replacing their PBX. Outsourcing the management of the hardware reduces the demands on busy IT and telecom staff. The customer gains the added advantage of carrier grade resilience without the need to make resilient design decisions and cope with the related cost penalties. 2005 will be the year that IP Centrex hosted services for business finally arrives.”

The TeleWare IP Telephony and application services are delivered across the Global Crossing network to customers from TeleWare’s secure hosted facilities in Docklands and based on TeleWare’s intelligent eXchange SIP-based architecture utilising the standard, proven TeleWare applications: intelligent Office, intelligent Number, intelligent Assistant and intelligent Message Centre. Billing and auto provisioning is provided by TeleWare Hosted Services on behalf of Global Crossing through a fully automated system and web based interface. The Global Crossing Hosted IP Voice™ service is available through resellers and ISPs focused on the enterprise market.

The upgraded RailNet platform will provide cost-effective, seamless communications for voice, intranet, local-area network, wide-area network and public network traffic using IP-based communications. Ericsson will be responsible for technical collaboration, design, project management and the integration of its MD110 Converged Communication System.

When fully deployed the MD110 systems installed in RailNet will integrate fixed and mobile telephony, IP phones, PC soft phones, cordless phones, mobile phones, digital phones and IP gateways. Additionally, 120 existing MD110 systems will be upgraded to provide advanced facilities.

Phil Metcalf, managing director of Global Crossing UK, said: "This significant investment demonstrates Global Crossing's continued commitment to evolve RailNet into a fully converged IP platform that offers the entire rail community a flexible set of secure offerings and new service applications that satisfy the safety-critical nature of the rail business."

Jonathan Smith, Vice President of Ericsson Enterprise division in the UK and Ireland, said: "This contract from Global Crossing is another clear indication of Ericsson's continued commitment to the enterprise sector. Ericsson offers advanced, best-in-class solutions, backed up with the technical ability, strategic view and vision to evolve its customers into an all-IP world."

Ericsson is shaping the future of Mobile and Broadband Internet communications through its continuous technology leadership. Providing innovative solutions in more than 140 countries, Ericsson is helping to create the most powerful communication companies in the world.