Orange Business to unify communications and develop collaboration between 20,000 users for JTI

Five-year contract across 40 countries represents one of the largest deployments of Microsoft Lync

Orange Business has been chosen by JTI (Japan Tobacco International) to transform its digital working environment by moving its existing communications landscape to a fully managed unified communications solution based on Microsoft Lync® 2013.

JTI is a leading international tobacco manufacturer headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

To create a workspace that fits JTI’s requirements, Orange Business will deploy and manage a unified communications solution to 104 JTI sites in 40 countries initially. The Lync-based solution will unify communications for 20,000 users with IM, Presence and Web conferencing services while 12,000 users will be enabled with Lync Enterprise voice and desktop video services, integrated with videoconferencing rooms. Orange will manage a hosted architecture and the entire ecosystem, including Sonus gateways and thousands of Polycom VVX Business Media Phones. An additional 3,000 mobile devices, tablets and smartphones will be Lync enabled.

This managed Lync solution enables JTI to bring the right people into the conversation very quickly, improves the speed of decision-making and communication-enabled business processes. In addition, JTI’s mobile workforce will be supported with the same powerful unified communications tools no matter what device they use or where they are working.

“Ease-of-deployment is a key requirement for enterprises evaluting UC solutions,” said Brian Riggs, analyst, Ovum. “Having a UC solution that can be deployed across all geographies and customized to a company’s business requirements by a single global integrator is among the topmost requirements for large enterprises. Companies deploying Microsoft Lync have a strong need for comprehensive consulting services, such as those offered by Orange Business, that create the best-suited UC solution with the highest level of security and expertise at the critical crossroads of networks, devices and IT.”

Guilain Rogg, JTI Global Technical Center VP, said: “To ensure the success of this major initiative, we selected Orange because of their expertise and knowledge about the existing environment to create a long-term strategy and associated roadmap. Their global capabilities support our geographical footprint and they have the ability to deliver end-to-end services, from transformation to operation, including management of all underlying service blocks.”

Under the 5-year contract, Orange Business’ key objective is to create a comprehensive global approach for JTI’s end users by creating a unified workspace that includes a seamless set of tools to enable collaboration between team members, partners and customers. This contract includes a transformation program during which Orange will deploy one site every week during a two-year period, starting with the European and Russian markets.

“We are very pleased to help JTI transform and provide its employees with new smart and mobile ways of working, facilitating and optimizing their day-to-day activities with a business-critical unified communications solution based on Lync,” said Dr. Helmut Reisinger, senior vice president for Europe, Russia and CIS, Orange Business. “Unified communications and collaborative solutions are a key pillar of the workspace transformation that is ongoing within companies. We are committed to support them in this evolution and in this specific case with JTI – at the global level.”