Moscow Financial and Legal Academy (MFLA) (Microsoft Lync Server 2010)

Project Tasks

The wide geographically-distributed structure of Academy causes a number of problems. For effective coordination of activity of university the staff of branches had to leave regularly to Moscow and to participate in meetings and administrations together with the staff of the Moscow departments. Permanent business trips required considerable costs and it was necessary to find a method to reduce these costs. In addition, MFYuA set the task to organize process of distance learning of employees and students.

Project Steps

Video conferencing system implementation would help to solve above-mentioned problems.

Proposals of different producers and suppliers were considered. Key selection criteria were:

• ease of use for end users;
• image quality;
• quality and connection speed;
• ability to integrate with the existing telephone system;
• ability to integrate with Exchange, Live@Edu which are actively used in MFYuA.

Several options, including open source solutions and popular solutions in the field of the IP telephony were considered. However they were unsatisfactory because of impossibility of their administration from Academy and also because of low security of communication channels. The solution Microsoft – the Lync project was recognized the best. Such choice was caused by the low cost of ownership, easy integration with the solutions and opportunities of reduction in cost of phone calls existing into MFYuA. The lack of need to buy the specialized equipment was decisive factor.

At a stage of project implementation of difficulties did not arise as the server was installed on the "net" equipment and no migration and reservation of data was required. Start of a system was carried out in actual practice and additional debugging was not required.

Within the project on pilot implementation of Lync in MFYuA the following functionality was implemented:

setup of the server with the set MicrosoftLyncServer 2010; setup of workstations with the unrolled client software for work with MicrosoftLyncServer 2010; setup of function of instant messaging; setup of function of audio-and video calls and a conference between users of Lync 2010 implementation of a planning feature and holding web conferences using Lync 2010; integration with a telephone system; training of staff of MFYuA

Project Effect

• Economy on traveling expenses, made more than 3 million rubles.
• Increase in speed of communications, including thanks to exchange of fast messages between the staff of Academy. Result: operational decision making on a number of organizational issues.
• Increase in level of coordination between the staff of administration and heads on places.
• Optimization of labor resources thanks to holding remote meetings and meetings and also failure from use of automatic telephone exchange.

In the first month after implementation costs on telephony were reduced by 20%, and expenses on training of employees were cut down for 30% thanks to broadcast of the program for all branches.

The organization of distance learning of students through Lync will become the next stage for MFYuA. Potential benefits from use of a video conferencing at the same time are obvious:

• cutting of costs for carrying out training (funds for lease of premises are not required, trips to the place of study of both pupils, and teachers, etc. are not necessary);
• an opportunity to provide training of a large number of people;
• quality improvement of training thanks to application of modern means, volume digital libraries, etc.
• creation of unified educational environment.

All works were performed just in time, integration with existing applications took place successfully. Already there is a positive experience: to Moscow there came two professors from Harvard, they gave very interesting lecture on resolution of disputes, and the lecture was listened by students from all branches, and on the course of a lecture there was an opportunity to ask questions.

It is no secret that not in all cities there are such strong teachers as, say, in Moscow and to send to the periphery of the Moscow teacher even for a short course of lectures and seminars costs much enough, and besides it is irrational. Lync gives the chance to effectively use forces and means. Besides, the efficiency of meetings considerably increased: thanks to a new system, the ideas stated at such meetings are picked up and implemented representatives of regions much quicker, than earlier.

Customer Feedback on the Project: "The Moscow financial and legal academy, on behalf of the vice rector for IT Zabelin Oleg Alekseyevich, expresses gratitude to all specialists participating in implementation of Lync within this project".