Mitel Selected to Enhance the Communication System for the International Herald Tribune

Mitel (News - Alert), a provider of unified communications or UC software solutions has been selected to redesign the communication system for the International Herald Tribune in order to enhance staff efficiency, reduce costs and provide unified communications capabilities and connectivity from anywhere.

The International Herald Tribune is the global edition of the New York Times, which is an international organization that employs more than 300 people of 47 nationalities in offices across the world.

The paper releases four editions a day and is distributed in 180 countries for six days a week. Approximately 240,000 copies are read every day, and an estimated five million Web surfers visit the paper’s Internet site. IHT wanted to modernize its communication architecture to make life easier for traveling employees; reduce costs; consolidate its infrastructure; develop its brand image; and standardize its entire architecture in Europe, said official sources.

To achieve this, IHT decided to replace its aging communications system in favor of an IP telephony and unified communications solution from Mitel. Also reorganization of the Paris head office of IHT is underway.

In a release Christophe Duprat, director of information systems for the International Herald Tribune, EMEA said, “We had a number of different phone systems in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa offices without any backup, and they were old so they risked failing at any time.”

“We could not control communication costs in a detailed manner, and the poor way in which call dispatching was being handled at reception was creating an image problem for us. Moreover, because of the disparate architecture it was impossible for our service desk to handle new requests from collaborators and monitoring user accounts were tedious,” Duprat added.

To cater to the needs of teleworking, the existing system had to be upgraded. To serve the purpose IHT selected the Mitel Communications Director or MCD to centralize the administration of the entire solution across Europe.

The deployed solution from Mitel covers the needs of all users irrespective of profile including deskbound user with a dedicated workstation; teleworker at a small remote site or working from home; mobile users, generally travelling and occasionally working from home and also on site mobile users.

Duprat further added that the Mitel communications architecture featuring mobility, integrated messaging, collaborative capabilities, IP telephony and administration applications has made IHT more flexible and more mobile.

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