Nortel Buzzboard

CRN Australia has a great article today about RMIT, a university based in Melbourne that is working with Nortel to completely update their network across three main campuses and 150 sites.  Nortel actually announced the contract with RMIT back in February, but this article by CRN Australia goes into great detail on their plans and progress via an interview with Allan Morris, the executive director of IT services for RMIT.

The end goal of the 2+ year, $10 million project is a campus-wide VoIP and unified communications network, as well as a variety of new communications and collaboration services.

RMIT will use the Nortel CS 1000 IP-PBX and MCS 5100 will be used together to provide staff with UC capabilities such as phone number portability, integration with desktop ‘soft phones’ to make communication possible without physical handsets, and on-demand voice and video conferencing from their PCs.  RMIT is also deploying 5,000 IP phones to staff across campus.

With the new network, Allan Morris says RMIT has the ability to help students learn — providing lectures via podcast just hours after they happen, or recording lectures using HD video.

Morris also says that RMIT is “trialing Nortel’s MCS Unified Communications product to determine the impact of click-to-call and instant desktop messaging on staff working across multiple decentralised campuses, and how it might change the way they work.”

The article is a great read, and you can see it here.