Lionbridge

Leading Content Provider Saves $3 Million on Telephony Management and Conferencing

Lionbridge is a leading provider of language, content, and technology outsourcing services. With more than 4,600 employees in 26 countries, the company wanted to make it easier for employees to communicate with each other, while reducing telephony and conferencing costs. Lionbridge enabled all employees for integrated voice over IP, Web conferencing, presence, instant messaging, e-mail, and voicemail by deploying Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007, Office Communicator 2007, and Exchange Server 2007. Lionbridge improved this solution with integrated audio conferencing and improved voice connectivity options by upgrading to Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The project is expected to produce annual benefits of more than U.S.$3 million when fully deployed. Now employees around the globe can easily communicate with each other, making them more efficient and more productive.

 

Situation

Lionbridge is a leading provider of language, content, and technology outsourcing services. Through its translation and globalization service offerings, Lionbridge adapts client software products, applications, and Web content to meet the linguistic, technical, and cultural requirements of users worldwide. Some of the company’s clients include Nokia, HP, Volvo, EMC, and Expedia. The company is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, and has 4,600 employees across 26 countries, including 1,600 skilled professionals in India, the People’s Republic of China, and Eastern Europe.

With employees in such diverse locations, the ability to quickly and easily communicate across time zones can be challenging. Lionbridge had been using Microsoft® Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2005. The enterprise instant messaging (IM) and presence server gave Lionbridge encrypted and authenticated IM, and it let Lionbridge users see colleagues’ presence information—that is, their availability and contact preferences. Because of the integration between Office Communicator 2005 and Microsoft Office system applications, Lionbridge users could view presence information directly from within a Microsoft Word document, an Office Excel® spreadsheet, or a SharePoint® site.
 
While communications were greatly improved because of that solution, the company wanted to make them even faster, easier, and more cost-effective. Lionbridge was paying more than U.S.$1 million annually for its external conferencing service. The company also wanted to reduce its long-distance telephone charges for Lionbridge employees and for partners and customers. To lower those conferencing and phone costs, Lionbridge was interested in learning how it might integrate voice over IP (VoIP) technology with its existing infrastructure.

Solution

Lionbridge decided to implement the next version of Microsoft unified communications solutions. The company deployed Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 (the successors to Live Communications Server 2005 and Communicator 2005), and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with Unified Messaging. Together, these software products provide a complete unified communications solution, including software-powered VoIP, on-site Web conferencing, presence, instant messaging, e-mail, and voice mail.

We did a call rate comparison and SIP Trunking is much cheaper than PRI. It varies by cost destination, but in some cases there was a 60 to 80 percent cost difference for telephony connection charges. Henk Thomassen IT Systems Engineer, Lionbridge

“One of the things that made us want to use Office Communications Server 2007 is that it integrates directly with the applications that most of the people at Lionbridge use,” says Oyvind Kaldestad, Director of Information Technology at Lionbridge. The company predominantly uses the Microsoft Office suite and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. “The other benefit is that [Office Communications Server 2007] didn’t require us to have a huge capital expense of voice network infrastructure. It rides on top of what we already have, and it didn’t require us to buy expensive IP phones or to buy or upgrade expensive network equipment.”

The company considered other options but decided on Microsoft software. “We looked at Office Communications Server 2007 as a low-cost solution that could be implemented in easy, smaller steps,” explains Kaldestad.

The goal was to upgrade the company from Live Communications Server 2005 to Office Communications Server 2007 (and from Communicator 2005 to Office Communicator 2007). Office Communicator 2007 is a unified communications client that helps people communicate easily with others in different locations using a range of different communication options, including instant messaging (IM), Web conferencing, and application sharing. The company began upgrading users in stages in late December 2006, and had upgraded the entire company by May 2007. The environment consists of 12 servers for Office Communications Server 2007. The conferencing and voice deployment, which is ongoing, will require five gateways, five Microsoft RoundTable™ video conferencing devices and 1,800 USB-enabled voice devices when completed.

“The upgrade from Live Communications Server 2005 to Office Communications Server 2007 went extremely smoothly,” says Kaldestad. “In fact, we upgraded much of the company in 24 hours—and that was with no outages or downtime for individual users. It was very efficient, very easy to do.”

All Lionbridge employees are using the solution’s IM, PC-to-PC calling, presence, and Web conferencing features to communicate and collaborate with each other on a daily basis. With PC-to-PC VoIP calling, Lionbridge employees can initiate a voice call by simply right-clicking on a contact’s name. And users can move from an instant message to a voice call or a call to a Web conference with a single click—without incurring external charges.

Web Conferencing

Lionbridge has discovered that its employees use the solution’s Web conferencing feature frequently. Web conferencing encompasses audio, video, and application sharing. “We are seeing an ever-increasing number of audio conferencing minutes each month,” says Thomassen. Lionbridge expects that it will widely distribute headsets for audio conferencing, and that employees will share video conferencing webcams.

Software-Powered VoIP

Employees can use VoIP to receive phone calls to Office Communicator 2007 from external parties—through the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)—and make calls from Office Communicator to external parties. Calls travel from the public telephone network to a PSTN gateway, then through a mediation server to Office Communicator 2007. To make calls, employees can either use peripheral audio devices, such as an IP handset or phone, or they can simply use Office Communicator 2007. “Actually, what we have found is that a very simple headset with a microphone is often good enough for most people’s purposes—voice calls and Web conferencing—and they are actually happier with this setup than they are with using the phone,” Kaldestad says.

Because Lionbridge has 40 separate Private Branch Exchange (PBX) telephone systems spanning many geographies—each managed separately and with varying qualities of service—it decided early on to bypass connectivity to its PBX systems. The company connects Office Communications Server 2007 directly to the public telephone network through a PSTN gateway. To achieve this, Lionbridge added a high-speed Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) T1 telephone line and a gateway to the main data center in the United States. “We figured most phone expenses were for calls made to the United States,” explains Henk Thomassen, IT Systems Engineer at Lionbridge. “So by installing the line and gateway here at the main data center, we pay only local or long-distance fees for these calls.”

Lionbridge chose a small user population to test audio devices, beginning with IT staff. “We relatively quickly thereafter included our senior management team and quite a bit of the direct reports from the senior management team—around 120 people—because they have frequent conference calls with people from Asia, and we wanted them to be champions for rolling this out,” Kaldestad says. “This turned out to be a successful strategy because the moment our senior officers started using it heavily, we got a lot more traction out in the field. In fact, our biggest user of this technology is actually our COO.”

Lionbridge also deployed a Microsoft RoundTable™ (communications and archival system) conferencing and collaboration device, which has a 360-degree camera and active speaker detection. “We have five RoundTable devices that are very well liked, especially whenever we have large meetings in big conference rooms,” says Kaldestad.

Exchange Server 2007 with Unified Messaging

Lionbridge has currently deployed Exchange 2007 with Unified Messaging to 530 employees, and is expanding this number over time. “We have deployed Unified Messaging to our heavy voice users where it can make the most impact for now,” says Thomassen. “These users are benefiting from features such as receiving voice mail messages through Office Outlook 2007 and accessing e-mail messages with any telephone.”

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Deployment

In 2008, Lionbridge decided to upgrade to Office Communications Server 2007 R2, which offers the audio conferencing, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) features the company requires. Oyvind Kaldestad, Director of Information Technology at Lionbridge, describes the reasons for the decision. “There are two features of R2 that are really important to us. First is the dial-in conferencing, which is very important to move the remaining meetings still kept on an external conference bridge to Office Communications Server. Secondly, SIP Trunking will enable us to use VoIP much more efficiently.” Lionbridge has deployed Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to 350 users and plans to upgrade the rest of the company’s 4,600 employees in 2009.

Audio Conferencing

The new solution will support audio conferencing bridges on the server. With this support, Lionbridge employees will be able to participate in audio conferences from a mobile phone and other land-line phones while they are out of the office. IT can also open up audio conferences to external users.

Software-based audio conferences hosted on Office Communications Server 2007 R2 are much easier to organize than traditional dial-in services and provide a familiar user interface.

SIP Trunking

Along with audio conferencing, the other key capability of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 that Lionbridge expects to take advantage of is SIP Trunking. SIP Trunking is the use of SIP and Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) to pass telephony traffic from the enterprise network edge to a network service provider over an IP connection, without traversing traditional telephony networks. “SIP Trunking is great. It looks very promising,” says Thomassen. The company expects significant savings compared to Primary Rate Interface (PRI) lines. “It removes the need to have both a Mediation Server and a PSTN [public switched telephone network] gateway in each local office. And there is more flexibility in how we can design our infrastructure beyond the borders of specific countries or specific offices."

Cash Flow Summary

Lionbridge enlisted the help of its VoIP and SIP Trunking partner, Global Crossing, a SIP Trunking service provider qualified for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Global Crossing has helped Lionbridge deploy a SIP Trunk in Madrid and it is working on one in the United States. The company expects to replace about 40 PBX systems over the next five years. Because of the flexibility of call routing of SIP Trunking, Lionbridge believes that it will only need a small number of SIP Trunks worldwide.

With each office’s deployment of SIP Trunking, Lionbridge incurs costs to establish local numbers, test connections, modify voice prompts, and fulfill other activities. So a change management effort will accompany the deployment of SIP Trunking, including training users and communicating phone number changes.

Lionbridge has benefited from the expert guidance that Global Crossing has provided regarding the SIP Trunking deployment. Thomassen says, “Global Crossing has been valuable as a partner. They have shown the improvements in flexibility that we can have in terms of call routing and redundancy. Global Crossing provides redundancy for us—if one of our SIP Trunks is down, Global Crossing can automatically detect and route the calls to another SIP Trunk. This is the kind of flexibility we really like.”

Benefits

By investing in their Microsoft unified communications solution, Lionbridge has provided a firm foundation to continue to improve company communications and end user productivity, while reducing travel costs for meetings and training, lowering conference call charges, and cutting telephony costs. Lionbridge employees find the solution saves them time and increases efficiency with the ability to reach each other more quickly and easily. Overall, Lionbridge estimates the project will have an internal rate of return (IRR) of 60 percent and will pay for itself in seven months.

Lowered Conferencing Costs

Lionbridge estimates it has shifted 80 percent of its conferencing minutes from an external conferencing service to Office Communications Server 2007. In addition, Office Communications Server 2007 is currently running 100 percent of Lionbridge’s video conferencing. On average, there are around 25 to 30 conferences each day, and typically 7 to 10 are happening at any given time. Conferences consist of anywhere between 2 to 80 people and are especially common in the morning, when Lionbridge offices in Europe, the United States, and India are online at the same time.

“We’re tracking the number of minutes and seeing very significant usage,” says Kaldestad. “In June 2007, we saw almost 200,000 conferencing minutes on Office Communications Server 2007. Now, if we would otherwise pay 10 to 20 cents a minute to an external service, that’s an estimated $20,000 in savings.” Kaldestad says. Overall, Lionbridge estimates annual potential benefits of $800,000 by managing their Web and video conferencing via Office Communications Server 2007.

By upgrading to Office Communications Server 2007 R2, the company will be able to take advantage of dial-in conferencing capabilities that will cover all conferences, including those with customers, partners, and employees away from their computers. Lionbridge expects to save an additional $300,000 to $500,000 with the deployment of Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

Total Cost of Ownership

Reduced Telephony Costs

“A company of our size may incur millions of dollars of calling charges worldwide every year,” says Kaldestad. He sees Lionbridge telephony savings coming from three main areas (not including teleconferencing savings). First is savings on individual internal and external phone calls. “Many of our internal calls are PC-to-PC VoIP,” says Kaldestad. With the new solution, whether calls are between people in separate countries or in the same building, there are no charges for internal calls. 

Secondly, the company is using VoIP more frequently to make calls outside of the company too. “With the enterprise voice functionality of Office Communications Server 2007, we can give a person in the People’s Republic of China or the United Kingdom or Germany a U.S. phone number—for example, on a project basis—and save significant money because the call is routed over the local data network, so we pay only for a local or U.S. long-distance call,” Kaldestad says. “So far, this has been very successful.” Lionbridge estimates that long-distance changes have been reduced by 25 percent.

The third area is SIP Trunking, which consolidates voice and data networks into one connection and significantly reduces the cost of connectivity to the service provider network. By centralizing their PSTN connectivity into the data center with SIP Trunking services from Global Crossing, Lionbridge expects to reduce telephony connection charges. “A company of our size may incur millions of dollars of calling charges worldwide every year,” says Kaldestand.

Thomassen says, “We did a call rate comparison and SIP Trunking is much cheaper than PRI. It varies by cost destination, but in some cases there was a 60 to 80 percent cost difference for telephony connection charges. We were quite amazed by seeing those cost differences. SIP Trunking enables us to define a good call routing plan that ensures us the best audio quality at the least cost.”

Improved Telephony Management

With a switch to Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and SIP Trunking, Lionbridge will decrease PBX setup and maintenance fees and eliminate local maintenance contracts for PBX systems, which are completely managed on the local level. The company will also avoid purchasing additional equipment for PBX systems. “With SIP Trunking, we expect a savings in management costs,” says Thomassen. The switch to SIP Trunking will centralize telephony management, enabling more efficient management.

“With almost 40 PBX systems that could be replaced in the next five years, we hope to save almost $1.4 million in capital investments,” notes Kaldestad. Lionbridge estimates the cost per move, add, or change of their PBX to be reduced by 90 percent. “PBX capital investments can be significant over time—costing approximately $40,000 a year, at an estimated cost of $80 per move, add, or change event” says Kaldestad. “So for each PBX we no longer have to maintain, Office Communications Server 2007 can save us $1,000 to $5,000 per month or an estimated $36,000 per year —not including the cost of various PBX trunks, each of which is usually $500 a month.”

Related to this are potential relocation savings. Kaldestad continues, “If we wanted to move an office, we could easily pay $10,000 to $50,000 in PBX and telephony relocation fees alone, which of course would be saved if we decided to use Office Communicator 2007 instead. So, the capital costs are significant. We recently had a proposal for one of our offices to spend $60,000 on a new PBX. We’ve decided to move that office to Office Communications Server 2007 instead.”

Overall, Lionbridge estimates their annual benefits around cutting telephony costs to be approximately $1,400,000 a year.

Saved Significant Time, Increased End-User Productivity

The solution has simplified how employees connect with each other, and this in turn saves them time. “We’re definitely simplifying communications to the level where things go faster and more efficiently with Office Communications Server 2007. What we are finding is that using presence, IM, and conferencing saves time,” says Kaldestad.

Because presence technology has been deployed out to the entire company, employees tend to use presence to see if others are at their desks and available. Then, if someone is away from his or her desk, instead of sending an e-mail message, they wait until the person is back and send an IM or place a phone call. Kaldestad says, “It’s easier with Office Communications Server 2007 to have virtual teams and people working together from different places in the world.”

You save a lot of the irritation that comes with misinterpreted or frustrating e-mails when you start using Office Communicator 2007 instead of doing the e-mail tagging. You can say, ‘Let’s talk about it.’ Oyvind Kaldestad Director of Information Technology, Lionbridge

Kaldestad thinks that it’s not only time that people are saving. “We’re also increasing efficiency with Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007,” Kaldestad says. “You save a lot of the irritation that comes with misinterpreted or frustrating e-mails when you start using Office Communicator 2007 instead of doing the e-mail tagging. You can say, ‘Let’s talk about it.’ Or, you can bring together three people in a voice call and quickly figure [a problem] out in two minutes instead of spending half an hour chasing e-mail back and forth. It’s hard to quantify. But it is an efficiency booster.”

Last but not least, as PBX systems are replaced by unified communications, IT staff will save a significant amount of time in maintenance tasks. “Time spent handling system contracts, supporting users, configuring phones, enabling and disabling lines and voice-mail systems, resetting PINs, changing user wiring, and so on are being eliminated for those offices that are primarily using Microsoft unified communications,” says Thomassen. Overall, Lionbridge estimates its annual benefits around improving end-user productivity to be approximately $205,000 a year, which is the equivalent of 6 minutes per day. 

Reduced Costs Related to Travel

The conferencing solution has also simplified how employees meet and interact with each other; allowing the company to significantly cut down travel costs related to meetings and training. Lionbridge estimates 10 percent of trips related to meetings can now be avoided due to its audio and video conferencing solution. This benefit equates to a potential annual savings of $70,000. In addition, Lionbridge expects to reduce travel costs related to training activities by $17,000 a year.
 
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For more information about Lionbridge Technologies products and services, call (781) 434-6000 or visit the Web site at:
www.lionbridge.com