Telstra puts a Springer in global publisher's step
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Telstra puts a Springer in global publisher's step

Springer, the world’s largest academic book publisher, was looking for a way to enable its 13,000 employees to seamlessly collaborate across its 58 sites located in 22 countries. Enter Telstra.

The Australian telco has been looking at ways of branching out from its homeland where its is facing increasing pressure due to a government plan to deploy a national broadband network.

Managing director for EMEA Tom Homer said the firm identified two key opportunities for international development. The first is the wholesale telecoms market, where it operates a voice network which extends to more than 200 countries and territories and multiple in-country providers so you can provide both in-depth regional and broad global coverage.

The second, Homer says, is enterprise. He adds: “We have an enterprise business and a wholesale business. We’re now growing our enterprise business faster than our wholesale business, as the traditional enterprise business catches up. In Europe we are around two thirds enterprise and one third wholesale. We have about 400 people and we’re growing very fast in continental Europe.

“We’ve got a fast growing team in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Sweden and we’re starting up in Dubai and South Africa as well.”

So what does Telstra do? “We fit into a few different categories. We specialise in helping organisations in the financial services segment, and have invest in a software-based trading solution. We’ve also been working on bringing solutions to market to help European financial services companies deal with some of the challenges in regulation that is coming in (ie mifiid 2).”

Springer is an organisation that has seen rapid growth across its markets, in part through a number of mergers and acquisitions – “amalgamations” as Sam Kent, the head of global infrastructure services dubs it.

This left it with a number of challenges, not least the need to implement a singular collaboration tool that spans its entire footprint.

Springer are “a European international, headquartered in Germany but with big teams across the continent”, Homer explains. “That’s a big market for us” he adds, as is media. Telstra won a “significant” contract to become the broadcast and network partner with Perform group who have the rights to women’s tennis around the world, for example.

For Springer, it was a recommendation from another Telstra enterprise client that led them to partner with the Australian telco who’s name may not be the first to spring to mind outside of its key market.

Kent explains: ““Telstra was recommended to us by Ocean Intelligent Communications and I am excited by the benefits this solution will deliver, specifically the improved productivity and employee engagement, and the delivery of a consistent experience for our global workforce.”

The partnership with the Berlin-based Springer will see 58 sites across six continents virtually connected through a cloud-based Cisco Unified Collaboration solution that will provide point-to-point video and audio conferencing, multiparty video conferencing, instant messaging, and shared desktop experiences.

Kent adds: ““We have experienced rapid growth through a number of amalgamations which has left us with multiple phone and IT systems. This has impacted the ability of our teams to connect and collaborate across offices and countries. Our IT department is also challenged to provide the level of support our employees had come to expect given the number of disparate systems.

“I am confident this partnership will enrich our knowledge sharing and collaboration across our business and, most importantly, help us to better serve our customers.”

“We were given the challenge by Springer to deliver a solution that enabled their employees to seamlessly collaborate on any device, across any network, anywhere in the world. To do this, our team has partnered with Springer to design a solution that combines a best-of-breed unified communications platform with our world-class network connectivity,” said Mr Homer. 

“We are committed to being a technology partner for our customers, designing solutions that meet an organisation’s specific needs and applying our expertise to implement and manage these solutions. Putting the right solutions in place is increasingly important as organisations look to digitise their businesses to expand into new markets, create new products or improve efficiency. 

“The size and diversity of our network also means we can provide Springer with six data links serving more than 10,000 end points across three regions. This will give Springer greater redundancy and connectivity,” Homer concluded.

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