Five Nortel Enterprise Customers Net Awards For Unified Communications

Winners Achieved Process And Productivity mprovements With Nortel Technology
GRAPEVINE, Texas – Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT] presented awards to five of its customers at the annual Global Connect conference, sponsored by the International Nortel Networks Users Association (INNUA)**, held in Grapevine, Texas. Winners of the Enterprise Customer Recognition Awards took bold steps with their unified communications solutions. They tackled issues like streamlining the hospital discharge process, enabling mobile employees to work with traditional in-office capabilities while away from their desks, and putting a call center in place to transfer callers and information to the right agents anywhere in the world.


Award winners are selected by INNUA and INSIGHT 100**, a user association for customers with Nortel Meridian SL-100 and Communication Server 2100 systems. “When selecting the winners, we sought to reward those companies that took innovative steps to improve their businesses,” said Steve Ford, president of INNUA. “We were looking for bold moves or broad implementations of Nortel technology that few others have tried. And we sought implementations that showed immediate, tangible improvements for those companies.”

Awards are presented each year in five categories. This year’s winners are:

Technology Innovation Best Practice: Integrys Energy Group
Business Innovation Best Practice: Sprint Nextel
Enterprise Transformation (more than 1,000 employees): Barclays
Enterprise Transformation (less than 1,000 employees): Montreal Canadiens Hockey Club
Sustained Excellence: Orlando Regional Healthcare Center
“These awards were presented to companies that continue to lead the way when it comes to driving business value through the use of Nortel technology,” said Joel Hackney, president, Enterprise Solutions, Nortel. “As shown by the winners, unified communications can be employed in many different ways, but in each of these cases it allows a company to resolve an issue while improving the productivity of its employees.”

For the Technology Innovation Best Practice award, presented to the enterprise that demonstrates the most resourceful use of developing technologies or service deployment strategies, Integrys Energy Group used instant messaging to improve its bidding process. A holding company based in Chicago, Illinois, and operating several U.S. energy subsidiaries, Integrys employed an instant messaging service that allowed for bids on energy purchases along with a converged office solution that provided superior communication for its employees.

Designing the most creative approach for tackling tough business problems earned Sprint Nextel the Business Innovation Best Practice award. Sprint Nextel is in the process of providing a unified communications experience, utilizing Microsoft and Nortel products, along with its own flexible IP and mobile networks, to provide its employees with a flexible and virtual work space environment. The solution will enable access to instant and easy-to-use communication tools that will ultimately improve teamwork, collaboration and productivity across the enterprise. The award also recognizes Sprint Nextel’s move to a centralized architecture which improves its service efficiency.

Nortel presented two annual awards in the category of Enterprise Transformation, which highlight customers that demonstrated the most visionary approach to creating business value with Nortel technology. One award is presented to businesses with more than 1,000 employees and one is presented to businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees.

For companies with more than 1,000 employees, the award went to Barclays for its contact center transformation in Europe. Barclays linked worldwide contact centers to drive substantial savings and to increase the efficiency of its employees. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and live agents now interact seamlessly in Barclays’ new network, which transfers callers, and their information, to the appropriate call center around the world.

The second Enterprise Transformation award went to the Bell Centre, home of the Montreal Canadiens, for creating the first totally wireless sports and entertainment venue supporting the operation of the point-of-sale system for concessions. The Bell Centre in Montreal now provides a redundant and secure network that connects users inside the center and in an external park. Media and event staff will be able to use the network and it even powers an Internet Café outside of the arena.

The final award for Sustained Excellence was presented to Orlando Health (formerly Orlando Regional Healthcare), a private, not for profit hospital, for automating its patient discharge process. Using IVR and Web applications, Orlando Health has simplified its Hospital Discharge Application (HDA). This first of its kind, HDA was built with input from staff at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Orlando, part of Orlando Health, and it is integrated with the patient information system in order to contact all doctors associated with a particular patient when the need arises.

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*Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel Networks.