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Voice Services Update

Voice Services Update

A major milestone was reached on 27 April when the contract with Siemens was completed. This gave the green light to both the Siemens and PSBA teams to press ahead with the project to establish the services in time for a number of pilot sites to come on stream by the end of the Summer. These are likely to include 3 Unitary Authorities, 2 Colleges and the NHS.

The voice contract comprises a broad range of telephony and related services which will be hosted by Siemens in BT data centres in Wales and delivered to Recipient Organisations over the PSBA network. These services range from gateway connections to legacy PABXs to fully hosted IP telephony services. In addition Siemens will be providing hosted Contact Centres and Unified Communications solutions. This is a service which will be built in Wales for Wales. The contract has the potential to save the Welsh Public Sector more than £5M per annum on telephony costs within three years.

Two separate Siemens teams are currently working in parallel. The first is progressing the project to build the infrastructure in conjunction with the PSBA team, Logicalis and the Pilot Recipient Organisations. This is going well and Siemens will be installing equipment in two data centres in Wales over the next few weeks. The second team is ramping up activities to engage with potential service users. We are already in active discussions with more than 20 separate organisations and are delighted with the enthusiasm that we are experiencing.

Siemens will be demonstrating the services at the upcoming forums and we expect to engage with many more Recipient Organisations over the next few weeks. We will be getting in touch with many of you soon.

However, if you wish to engage before we do then contact us via the dedicated PSBA voice email account – psbavoice@wales.gsi.gov.uk