Datacraft Helps Avanta Set Shop In India With IP Telephony On Cisco Platform

With cities becoming large concrete jungles with every passing day, there is bound to be an inevitable crunch for space. In a scenario such as this, the concept of managed workspace seems to be a viable option. Biztech2.com explores this side of the business and how IP telephony is the backbone of it.

Avanta’s Managed Workspace

David Kinnaird, group operations director, Avanta, says, “Avanta is a provider of managed workspace, which means we provide offices and workspaces for people. The idea is that somebody takes space with us and we provide them with telephones, an Internet connection and everything that they need to conduct business, including refreshments et al at a bundled cost. When we decided to expand our products into India, we needed to ensure that our proposition for our customers was the same as the UK, as far as possible. What this meant was delivering high quality handsets to people to use on their desks. Above all, we were looking to offer people mobility regarding their work. The only solution that looked viable to us was the IP telephony solution. The facilities that our customers needed were handsets, voicemail, extension mobility and so on. Thus, after scanning the market, we decided on Datacraft as our provider for the IP telephony solution.”

Need: Flexible, Futuristic Network

With its major operations in the UK, Avanta began its ambitious journey of setting up offices in India. Starting ground up in an alien country was definitely fraught with challenges and Avanta had to constantly battle issues revolving around culture, in-sourcing and many more.

For Kinnaird, it took a little time to get used to what Datacraft was proposing. The big problem was understanding something that was outsourced in the UK and was now being effectively in-sourced in India.

Raghuveer H R, head-Country Sales, Datacraft India, said, “Avanta was sure that it wanted to build a robust network, which its clients could take advantage of. The network had to be futuristic and at the same time aesthetically in tune with current times, while also giving a lot of flexibility.”

Datacraft’s Unyielding Support

Avanta needed a partner that could understand exactly what its needs were and build a converged communication infrastructure for its business service centres in Mumbai. Here’s how Datacraft was involved in setting up Avanta’s sophisticated offices by installing the IP Network and IP Telephony (IPT) platform for the two new centres.

Kinnaird says, “The first thing that we had to do was to integrate the Cisco platform with the operating console that we wanted to use. Each one of our customers is a client within the Avanta business centres and each of them has individual phone numbers for each of their people, but the main number for their company is answered by Avanta. We have an operating console called Evo, which is used at the reception desk that enables the team at the reception to answer the calls, giving details of the origin of the call after which the call is transferred.”

“Evo has originated in the US and is a very simple platform but Datacraft had never seen it before so they had to try and get it working and they did so successfully. The second step was call logging. We needed to have the ability to rate all customer calls. For this, we have a call logging solution called Elephant. Again, Datacraft had to integrate that solution to make it work, which they once more did successfully. The final step was the solution architecture, which was the overall design system.”

Challenges

The implementation did involve cracking a few tough nuts and getting everything going in under five weeks.

According to Kinnaird, the implementation was based around the buildings themselves. Avanta acquired three buildings in India. The first building came up in Delhi and Avanta placed the order with Datacraft to try and coincide the functional date with when that building would be ready to be occupied. Datacraft had to tie in with the availability of the lines of the building, availability of communication in the server room and in fact the availability of the building itself.

“The second and third order for the Mumbai office came much later. Each individual project took around two months but the actual physical component had to be deployed by Datacraft much faster, in around 4-5 weeks,” adds Kinnaird.

Benefits

The converged communication infrastructure brought many benefits for Avanta.

Raghuveer says, “As this network was being provided to Avanta’s clients, the needs and wants of the clients were varied; be it the platform or the kind of communication requirements they had. We had to actually cater to a network that was future proof and which would suit all of Avanta’s clients. With the kind of intelligence that we have built into the network, there is not one percent chance that a customer can miss a call. Today, Avanta doesn’t have to duplicate the infrastructure as it’s a converged infrastructure and it is multimedia capable. All the latest XML applications are fed in and all phones are powered over Ethernet.”

Kinnaird says, “Just the fact that we found a partner, who could deliver the solution in time and within the budget is a real benefit. I think the future benefit lies in the fact that I see the relationship with Datacraft expanding in terms of building applications and integrating the system that we have with our existing applications so that Avanta’s clients can become self-serving.”