Aspect Marks Two-Year Anniversary of Global Strategic Alliance and Equity Investment with Microsoft

ORLANDO – Aspect, a global provider of unified communications (UC) and collaboration services and software, today announced that it has marked the two-year anniversary of its global strategic alliance with Microsoft Corp. During the past year of the strategic alliance, Aspect has achieved many significant milestones, including completing its own global deployment of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2; growing its unified communications (UC) services practice with more than 40 new enterprise customers; releasing instant message (IM) routing capabilities with Aspect® Unified IP®; establishing a Microsoft SharePoint Server practice with the acquisition of Quilogy, a Microsoft national systems integrator; and training more than 250 individuals on deploying Microsoft UC technologies.

Working closely with Microsoft, Aspect met a number of key milestones throughout the year, including:

• Completed its own global deployment of Office Communications Server 2007 R2.  Aspect deployed Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to 100 percent of its employee base for all voice and voicemail services, audio and web conferencing, instant messaging (IM) and presence. Since the beginning of the company-wide rollout in the first quarter of 2009, Aspect has seen a number of significant benefits, including $1 million in savings on annual conferencing costs, $300,000 in savings on annual support of multiple PBXs that were eliminated, and $250,000 in annual savings on telecommunication charges as a result of deploying SIP trunking.
• Deployed Office Communications Server 2007 R2 for more than 40 customers and has built a strong pipeline for the remainder of 2010. One current deployment includes the State of Arkansas’ largest agency, the Department of Human Services (DHS), which offers hundreds of services to more than 700,000 people each year. The agency is leveraging Aspect UC Services to help ensure a quick, seamless rollout of Office Communications Server 2007 video conferencing and unified messaging to a select number of employees, and IM, presence, and audio conferencing to 7,500 of its workers. Three months after an initial deployment for more than 100 seats, the Arkansas DHS is already realizing a significant decrease in the cost of managing its communications infrastructure, and lower travel and conferencing expenses. 
• Introduced new instant messaging (IM) features and expanded presence functionality for its UC applications for the contact center. Working in alignment with the Microsoft UC roadmap, Aspect released these enhancements through the Aspect® Unified IP® 6.6.1 platform product to augment the capabilities available through Aspect’s UC applications’ core queuing, routing, and reporting functionality. New features include improved IM routing for enhanced customer interactions via Microsoft Office Communicator and through the Web with click-to-IM; and extended presence and IM communications within the contact center.
• Acquired Microsoft National Systems Integrator, Quilogy, to expand the UC Services practice with collaboration expertise. The acquisition of Quilogy added collaboration capabilities to Aspect’s UC services portfolio to help organizations improve business processes with the combined capabilities of these technologies. Aspect now provides strategic and technical knowledge around collaboration tools for key Microsoft platforms, including, Microsoft SharePoint Server.  Bringing together UC and collaboration software applications with systems integration (SI) capabilities helps customers achieve business objectives more effectively than through services or applications individually.
• Completed significant training in Microsoft UC and collaboration capabilities. More than 250 Aspect employees completed training and certification on deploying Microsoft UC technologies, including a Microsoft Certified Master in Office Communications Server. Aspect invested significant resources in continuing to expand its knowledge and expertise around Microsoft UC technologies and deployment practices

“Aspect has been an important partner for Microsoft. It is instrumental in helping organizations strategically apply Microsoft unified communications and collaboration capabilities to achieve business objectives,” said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of the Office Communications Group at Microsoft. “The third year of the alliance will be marked by a number of key joint efforts which will deliver even greater value including helping enterprises and contact centers take advantage of the significant release of Microsoft Communications Server “14” and Microsoft SharePoint 2010. These upcoming releases will allow companies to deploy unified communications very cost effectively, as well as enhance collaboration across the organization and in customer interactions.”

As the alliance moves into its third year, Aspect will continue to perform as a lead systems integrator for Microsoft in unified communications, while expanding expertise and offerings around collaboration. Aspect will focus on:

• Enhancing Aspect’s UC applications for the contact center with new UC and collaboration functionality.

• Seamless Customer Service™ will feature a unified agent desktop with UC, collaboration, multiline and scripting; expert routing and expert search with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010; and integration with Microsoft Communications Server “14”.
• Streamlined Collections™ and Optimized Collections™ will feature unified agent desktop with UC, collaboration, multiline and scripting; outbound dialing over session initiation protocol (SIP); and short message service (SMS) support for outbound notification.
• Productive Workforce™ will feature “Click to Communicate” functionality between supervisors, agents and knowledge workers for faster resolution of scheduling issues; and the ability to publish schedules to Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server.
• Blended Interaction™ will also feature “Click to Communicate” for enhanced schedule resolution issues; unified agent desktop with UC, collaboration, multiline and scripting; outbound dialing over SIP and SMS support for outbound notifications.

• Expanding Aspect’s collaboration expertise and practice. Aspect will continue to grow the collaboration portion of its UC Services practice with additional training and through expansion led by the former Quilogy team. By coupling Aspect’s UC capabilities with the newly acquired SharePoint Server, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, business intelligence, interactive/portal development, and .NET development capabilities, Aspect will be offering an even more comprehensive set of Microsoft-based IT services and corresponding value proposition to enterprise customers.

“Microsoft and Aspect have marked several impressive milestones in the second year of the alliance, and we look forward to this year’s milestones – which are significant – as we work to achieve our shared vision of enabling organizations to transform enterprise business processes and offering contact centers unified solutions without compromise,” said Jim Foy, chief executive officer, Aspect. “Amidst this past year’s economic climate, we continued to see strong interest in our UC applications and their ability to streamline companies’ interactions both internally and with customers and prospects. And, with the addition of collaboration expertise to our domain expertise, our UC Services practice has even more to offer companies that need to reduce costs and streamline business processes, both critical keys to success now more than ever.”

About Aspect
Aspect is a global software and IT services firm specializing in applying Microsoft unified communications and collaboration to help customers achieve optimal results through enhanced business processes across the enterprise and in the contact center.  Aspect provides IT consulting, integration services and business applications. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.
 
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