Siemens Enterprise Communications Group announced that Anglicare Australia, an Anglican church-based network of advocacy and charity organizations caring for people in need, is using the company’s voice and data connectivity to provide IT infrastructure and Voice over IP telephony.

 

With the technology, Anglicare Australia is offering its 1,200 employees, who are spread across 46 locations in South Australia, a reliable way to connect to care providers and staff using a combination of SEN Group’s IP telephony and Enterasys (News - Alert) wired and wireless networking solutions.

 

The organization, after evaluating a number of companies, chose SEN Group for its ease-of-use, reliability, scalability, security, interoperability, support for IPv6 and total cost of ownership.

 

“Before the SEN Group’s solutions were in place, our network infrastructure was in a bad state—inefficient, static, difficult to manage and extremely expensive to support,” said Daryl Eckermann, IT manager for Anglicare Australia, in a statement. “We were in need of a next-generation network that would provide the foundation for data and voice collaboration for our many locations, including wireless remote connectivity for traveling staff, and most importantly,  easy management capabilities for our small IT staff.”

 

Anglicare’s data and voice network, now powered by SEN Group, offers data collaboration, remote connectivity and reliable VoIP service, optimizes productivity for care providers and administration. Officials said it has already provided a “significant” cost savings on telephony services.

 

“Until we installed the HiPath 3800 solution, we didn’t realize how many site-to-site phone calls were being made across the external telephony system and how much those calls were costing us,” Eckermann said. “Once the deployment was complete, we saw almost immediate savings on our phone bill, which was unexpected. Our original return on investment projection on the telephony segment of the new network was five years. We’ve already revised that figure to less than three years before the project pays for itself.”

 

The new network offers for business-critical applications such as clinical care management software, e-mail, a company intranet, quality management database and operations software such as finance, payroll and fundraising management, Anglicare said. Traveling caregivers that specialize in home-based outreach can rely on secure, remote connectivity, while counselors leverage the robust VoIP solution for around-the-clock availability.

 

In addition, the nursing staff in Anglicare’s aged care facilities use the Enterasys’ convergence-optimized wireless solutions for wire-free patient care zones to help them manage medication dispensing and keep resident care plans protected, SEN officials said.

 

The SEN Group provides end-to-end enterprise communications, including voice, network infrastructure and security solutions that use open, standards-based architectures to unify communications and business applications for a seamless collaboration experience. The company’s so-called “open communications” approach helps organizations improve productivity and reduce costs through its easy-to-deploy solutions that work within existing IT environments.