Gibson Guitar strikes a chord with Microsoft UC platform

摘要

Gibson Guitar is enjoying the sweet music playing out on its multifaceted unified-communi-cations system that connects its users across the globe. The Nashville, Tenn., company last year abandoned a rollout of Cisco gear and tapped into its existing Microsoft infrastructure to build a unified-com-munications system of voice, e-mail and instant messaging (IM). The company upgraded to the 2007 versions of Office Communications Server (OCS), Exchange Server, Office Communicator and Office Outlook to create a centrally deployed and managed platform that eventually will service 600 users. "What it came down to for us is that we were already running all these Microsoft products, so it did not make sense to switch," says Kevin Wing, senior network engineer for Gibson. "For the entire rollout, we only bought one additional server."