VoIP Finds its Voice at the Coop

With a turnover in excess of 1.7bn and over 15,000 staff employed from the Midlands to Cumbria and from Northern Ireland to the East Coast of Yorkshire, the Society offers a wide range of services, which include food stores, travel, motor dealerships, pharmacies, funeral homes, and a number of other subsidiaries. Over the past year it has invested in a broadband ADSL network from Evoxus and is now benefitting from the increased bandwidth and fixed costs. The likely savings figures will be in excess of 1million across all contracts associated with this development.

“With such a large estate we inevitably have to deal with the complexity of different networks and technologies,” explains Ian Dyson, General Manager Information Services of United Co-operatives. “We’ve decided to trial an IP solution with 40 of our users initially, the aim being to make the workforce more flexible and to drive down costs. More importantly, using the Evoxus solution, we can install VoIP at a network level and therefore protect our investment in legacy equipment.”

“The latest research indicates that 44 per cent of the world’s corporate telephone lines may well be IP-based by 2008,” comments Mark Lower, CEO of Evoxus. “But a separate survey found that most IT managers have been reluctant to write off the substantial investments already made in analogue PBX systems by replacing them with VoIP. Unlike competitive VoIP offerings, the Evoxus solution is installed at a network level using SIP* which means that our customers are not required to replace legacy equipment. In essence we’re de-risking the move to VoIP!”

* Background to SIP
SIP is an abbreviation of Session Initiation Protocol. It is an internet Standard and as the name describes, it allows users to initiate sessions. These sessions can be simple voice calls or videoconferencing. SIP is an official Internet Protocol standard and it is quickly becoming the de facto VoIP standard.