A technology services company witnessed a surge in business performance after upgrading its connectivity backbone

Vishnu Anand

Solutions Enterprise is an IT services and technology company that provides infrastructure management solutions to clients belonging to verticals such as pharma, automobiles, banking & finance, ITeS and travel in India, England and the US. To manage critical IT infrastructure of their clients, it was very important that the company had reliable and secure communication links amongst their regional offices and customer sites. The key requirements from their communication network were Internet connectivity, telecommunications and mobile connectivity.

To start off, Solution Enterprises initially used SIP-based IP phones and analog phones that were connected using a combination of Cisco ATA / Linksys PAP2 / Vega Analog gateway and soft PBX (Asterix). The offices in Mumbai, Ahmedabad and partner companies in England were connected over Internet/VPN. However, the voice quality amongst these offices was unsatisfactory, therefore they considered using MPLS (MultiProtocol Label Switching) or International Private Leased Circuit, but the cost of deploying international MPLS circuit was significantly higher and the company was in a turmoil with mediocre connectivity and lack of big budgets. In addition, there were cost issues related to system maintenance as the solution required technical resources with good working knowledge of Asterix and Linux. Then, there was the business challenge of add-on features, and the business losses suffered due to calls being missed. Another factor was that engineers missed urgent messages because they were on support calls.
The Director also missed important calls because he could not always be expected to be at his desk and using an analog cordless phone did not solve the problem either as both the voice quality and battery life were unsatisfactory. Integrating the new system with an existing non-Cisco IP enabled PBX  system at an associate office was a technical challenge as this required configuring and reassigning extension numbers. Moreover, a control for dialing external numbers had to be implemented.

The main objectives of the project were to provide: Superior voice quality; Encryption; Caller ID; Voice Mail; Conference facility; Call forwarding / transfer / pickup; Directory; Call hunting; and Soft clients. The company deployed Cisco's Unified Communications 500 Series which supports numerous rich-media client applications. Such a system provides companies like Solutions Enterprise with a new way to communicate, enabling secure access to information anytime and anywhere, while helping people to work together more efficiently and effectively. After the deployment, Solutions Enterprise claims more flexibility in its operations due to efficient pickup and incoming call features. An added benefit is that  clients and co-workers can leave important messages while engineers are on support calls. Conferencing is being used effectively for group discussions / support calls giving users better control over outgoing calls. Overall inter-office communications have increased resulting in improved efficiency and productivity.


Using a Unified Communications solutions eliminates multiple servers and combines voice, data, voicemail, automated attendant, video, security, and wireless capabilities. It also integrates with existing desktop applications such as calendar, e-mail, and customer relationship management (CRM) programs. It is an easy-to-manage solution that supports up to 50 users in flexible deployment models based on client need.
                                     — Pratik Patela, Director, Solutions Enterprise