Case Study: Concordia University Employs SessionSuite to Internet-enable Campus Communications

Concordia University is a large, urban university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university required a scalable and versatile IP telephony solution that could leverage and extend its existing VoIP telecommunications and IT infrastructure to deliver new, economical IP-based communications services. The SessionSuite solution from BlueNote Networks enabled Concordia to rapidly add click-to-talk capabilities to its Web-based student portal and help desk Web site, and to create new Internet-based voice services for its diverse user community all with a single, extensible platform that will serve the universitys needs well into the future.

The Need: Rapidly Deliver New Internet-Facing Telephony Services

With an enrollment of some 40,000 students and nearly 4,000 faculty and staff members, Concordia University is in many ways its own city spread across two campuses: Sir George Williams Campus in downtown Montreal; and Loyola Campus in the residential west-end of Montreal. Concordias more than 180 undergraduate programs are divided into four faculties: Arts and Science, Engineering and Computer Science, Fine Arts and the John Molson School of Business. The School of Graduate Studies offers more than 70 additional programs leading to masters and doctoral degrees, as well as a variety of graduate diplomas and certificates for professionals seeking to upgrade their knowledge and skills.

The universitys Instructional and Information Technology Services (IITS) group provides infrastructural services in the areas of computing, voice and data communications, systems, instructional technology, and media development. The two campuses are linked via fiber optics, and wireless LAN access is available virtually everywhere both inside and around all of the 75 buildings on both campuses. Cisco Systems Unified Communications Manager provides voice services to faculty, staff and selected students. IITS wanted to exploit its extensive IP and wireless infrastructure to offer convenient and readily-available voice services to students, faculty and staff. At the same time the university was looking to improve support for the user community while making better use of valuable IT help desk resources.

IITS decided to add interactive voice capabilities to its Web browser-based student portal to enable students to communicate with other students, faculty or staff members from any location. They also decided to add click-to-talk and click-to-chat capabilities to the IT help desk to improve end-user support. Finally, they planned to offer an IP softphone client to students as part of a software bundle designed to provide users with a complete set of tools needed to access all IITS voice, data and video services.

The Solution: SessionSuite SOA Edition, SessionSuite WebCaller and SessionSuite Desktop

Andrew McAusland, associate vice president of IITS at Concordia, explains the reasons why the university selected SessionSuite from BlueNote Networks to make these enhancements to its voice services system: In reviewing and selecting a communications services solution, we were focused on companies that understood our current needs, and that also had the vision to provide for our future growth. BlueNotes SessionSuite solution allows us to efficiently deploy advanced interactive communications capabilities for our faculty, staff, students and extended user community. This is made possible by using a single, flexible software platform that leverages our current infrastructure.

BlueNotes SessionSuite product family integrates real-time interactive communications with business applications and processes to help improve productivity, collaboration and business agility. Designed for scalability, resiliency and ease of management, SessionSuite comprises an open, modular software architecture that can be incrementally deployed alongside existing TDM PBX and IP telephony systems without operational disruptions to enhance and modernize services.

Concordia is using three products in the SessionSuite family: the SessionSuite SOA Edition platform, the SessionSuite WebCaller thin telephony client and the SessionSuite Desktop IP softphone client. SessionSuite SOA Edition delivers Internet-facing IP telephony services to the Cisco Unified Communications Manager infrastructure. SessionSuite WebCaller adds interactive communications to the Web-based student portal directory, and also supplies click-to-talk and click-to-chat capabilities for the IT help desk Web site. SessionSuite Desktop is a windows-based softphone that enables students to use their laptop computers to make Internet-based phone calls. Together, SessionSuite SOA Edition, SessionSuite WebCaller and SessionSuite Desktop provide IITS everything needed to interoperate with and extend the capabilities of Concordias existing Cisco Unified Communications Manager infrastructure.

The foundation of the SessionSuite solution is the SessionSuite SOA Edition Business Communications Platform that enables the university to efficiently add voice and video communications to Web sites, business processes and other software applications. The platforms ability to interface seamlessly with other systems and services is what enabled Concordia to integrate SessionSuite SOA Edition so easily with Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

SessionSuite WebCaller is a fully functional, highly customizable, lightweight telephony client that is well suited for a wide variety of applications, including portals, kiosks, Web sites, Web 2.0 and thin-client software applications. Because WebCaller is designed for adding interactive communications to Web sites and browser-based applications, the IITS organization found it easy to embed real-time voice communications directly into the student portal. Concordia is also leveraging WebCaller to extend and improve Help Desk support throughout the university community. By supporting both text and voice communications, and allowing the IT help desk agent to determine the preferred mode of communications, WebCaller also has helped increase IT help desk staff productivity. For example, the staff can communicate with multiple students simultaneously via text chat, and invite a user to participate in a more in-depth voice chat only when absolutely necessary.

Concordia has found SessionSuite Desktop to be both feature-rich, and easy to install and use. Unlike other softphones, SessionSuite Desktop integrates seamlessly with popular PC software to make communications an integral part of any application. For example, users can take advantage of one-click contextual dialing from Web pages, Microsoft Office documents, Microsoft Outlook messages and contacts, and many other applications. Concordia particularly likes how SessionSuite Desktop enables any user to access university phone services when away from the office, home or dorm.

The Results: Rapid Implementation and Trouble-free Operation

McAusland is quite pleased with just how easy it has been for the IITS staff to integrate SessionSuite products into the universitys voice services infrastructure. In less than a month, we were able to implement the click-to-talk feature in plenty of time for a major rollout at the beginning of the school year.

SessionSuites high-level Web Service APIs enable Web designers with no special telephony expertise or training to quickly and easily add voice capabilities to Web-based applications, such as the help desk Web site and student portal. The SessionSuite software development kit also includes a variety of code samples that further help to expedite and simplify development efforts. And BlueNote Networks comprehensive support services programs provide access to the latest product information, along with expert assistance in application development, deployment and support.