Case Study: Mitel Frees Life-Sciences Consultancy From Communications Constraints

The Client.
Intrasphere Technologies Inc. is a consulting firm focused on the life sciences industry. Intrasphere designs and builds applications that help customers adhere address needs including drug safety, comply with regulatory and IT requirements, and conduct business intelligence. Founded in 1996, Intrasphere is headquartered in New Jersey with operations in Europe, and has more than 130 employees. Intrasphere has been recognized by organizations such as Deloitte & Touche, Crains New York Business and Inc. Magazine.

The Challenge. To service their customers, Intrasphere personnel are constantly on the go, yet must remain connected and reachable at all times. Intrasphere needed to a cost-effective, flexible communications solution so it could operate more nimbly and support a wide range of user requirements while integrating with its virtualized datacenter. One of the big things that we need is flexibility,” said Amit Mantri, Intraspheres director of network operations. We need the freedom to be able to do more with less, to let people work in ways that are most effective for them, and to stay in touch with customers no matter what were doing or where we are.”

Intrasphere employees use BlackBerry devices but the consulting firm found a problem in one area: Your BlackBerry number is different from your desk number,” said Mantri.

The Solution. Intrasphere turned to its channel partner, Cortel Business Solutions, for help. Weve been working with Cortel for many years, and were very happy with the solutions they provide, the depth of experience they have, and their ability to gauge our problems and give us appropriate solutions,” Mantri said. Cortel recommended Intrasphere install Mitel Networks Corp.s Unified Communicator (UC) Advanced, a platform that, among other functions, integrates four-digit desk dialing with mobile numbers.

And with Mitels hotdesking and softphone technologies, Intrasphere employees can sign on to phones at the office, home, or on the road, and get immediate access to the same personalized productivity features. When traveling, they often depend on broadband wireless connections. Thats where the Mitel UC Advanced Softphone comes into play: the softphone allows access to the same four-digit dialing users have in their offices.

In addition, Intrasphere further decided to upgrade to Mitels new virtualization platform. Traditionally, weve looked at data and voice separately,” Mantri explained. Now, being able to combine them on a standardized VMware platform that weve been using for over five years is a great advantage.” Thats because the migration will lower Intraspheres total cost of ownership as it virtualizes voice and data communications.

Overall, one of the reasons Intrasphere chose to implement the virtualization system is that Mitel and VMware are partners. That was a big deal for us,” Mantri said. Its now one infrastructure that we love and know how to support.”

Rob Handel, vice president of sales for Cortel, said the conversation around virtualizing voice came quite naturally with Intrasphere.” The life-sciences firm had virtualized most of its data applications already, so taking the next step and adding voice to that converted data network was an obvious choice. Virtualizing their voice apps fit nicely into their overall business continuity, data management and converged technology strategies,” Handel said.

The Result. For Intrasphere, Mitel technologies and solutions mean employees are free to communicate in ways that make sense to them, and the ability to better serve clients at the office, at home and on the go. Intraspheres IT department realized cost savings in hardware and management with consolidated, virtualized voice and data. And the company as a whole enjoys a lower cost of ownership for a more flexible technology infrastructure that can accommodate their needs as they change.

Were very excited about our future with Mitel,” said Mantri. With all of the benefits we get, the possibilities for the future seem endless.”