McMaster University Improves Collaboration and Communication Between Students and Faculty

Cost-effective migration will seamlessly move more than 10,000 licensed users to the Avaya Aura® Platform

Consistently ranking as one of the top 100 post-secondary institutions in the world, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada was eager to modernize its communications infrastructure in order to increase collaboration between its nearly 8,000 faculty and staff.

With an aging communication infrastructure servicing over 50 buildings on its main campus and various off campus locations, along with two new off-campus facilities set to open prior to the 2014-15 school year, McMaster—a longtime Avaya customer—knew the potential cost of standing still. Instead, the university chose to move communications forward, green-lighting a multi-phase deployment to migrate 10,000 licensed users from old CS1000 platforms on to one unified Avaya Aura® Platform.

Increasing On-campus Collaboration

Scheduled to open both the Centre for Continuing Education and the David Braley Health Sciences Centre in 2015, McMaster University made it a priority to outfit its new off-campus, downtown locations with a state-of-the- art communications infrastructure.

The university envisioned its staff and faculty seamlessly communicating through a variety of devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs, Macs, and conference room video systems. However, whatever platform it chose would have to work seamlessly with its on- and off-campus buildings, all of which were running on various end-of-life Nortel platforms, until users at each site were successfully migrated.

Making matters more complicated, the university was already in the midst of switching to a new administrative information system, so it was essential the migration have minimal impact on the day-to-day operations of faculty and staff who were already managing a significant amount of change. It was also vital that all 5-digit extension numbers stay the same, as the university operated on a coordinated dialing plan, which it shared with hospitals in the area.

An Education in Easy Migration with Millions in Savings

Normally, migrating thousands of staff to a modern Unified Communications & Collaboration (UCC) platform would cost millions upon millions of dollars -  funding that a public research university like McMaster would be hard-pressed to find. However, thanks to Avaya’s Software Investment Protection Program, the university was able to move from old Nortel technology to a cutting-edge communications platform at a minimal cost.

“The opportunity to capitalize on our existing investments and migrate over 10,000 licenses to the Avaya Aura® Platform represented a significant savings for the university,” said Paula Brown-Hackett, Senior IT Manager-Enterprise Networks, McMaster University. “The amount of money we’re spending for the value we’re getting is incredible. Moving forward with Avaya was the ultimate no-brainer.”