The background
South West Communications Group deploys a multi-site Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise telephony network supporting 2,000 users for the NHS Wales Business Service Centre.
The NHS Wales Business Service Centre (BSC) was established in 2003 following an organisational shake-up to support their 22 newly-formed local health boards. The BSC’s remit was to provide a high standard of professional services to these local health boards and to assist them in achieving their business objectives.
The challenge
As part of a review, NHS Wales set out to rationalise its 6 offices into 3 regional locations. It quickly concluded that their existing communications infrastructure and blend of ageing telephone systems were not suitable to meet the demands of the new regional offices.
NHS Wales wanted to future-proof their investment while improving the functionality and efficiency across the organisation. They required a solution that would enable them to utilise existing legacy equipment where there was no business case for replacement, while providing a cost-effective infrastructure for the modern health service.
Being part of the National Health Service, NHS Wales was duty-bound to be both risk-averse and cost conscious. This would mean taking advantage of the existing NHS virtual private network (VPN) which would enable free calling between sites and the sharing of operator facilities between the 3 offices.
NHS Wales needed an infrastructure that would integrate with the existing legacy equipment, reduce their cost of ownership, support remote workers, provide centralised management across all sites and provide a flexible, scalable solution to meet future requirements.
The solution
To meet these challenges, NHS Wales approached all the main telephony manufacturers for their recommendations and the introduction of suitable partners. Alcatel-Lucent immediately recommended South West Communications Group due to its expertise and experience within the healthcare sector.
Having also been accredited with its PASA “Contracted Supplier‟ status since 2002, South West Communications Group fully understood the requirements of NHS Wales and was confident of taking complete ownership of the project.
NHS Wales needed an infrastructure that would integrate with the existing legacy equipment, reduce the cost of ownership of its telephony system, support remote-site telephony, centralised management across all sites and provide a flexible solution for future requirements.
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