When the Sea Launch project put a radio station satellite into orbit from a floating platform, dynamic positioning systems from Kongsberg Simrad kept everything stable. Subsea equipment from Kongsberg was used to locate and film the sunken German battleship Scharnhorst and Kongsberg's multibeam echo sounder helped survey the 2000-year-old submerged town of Baia off the cost of Italy.

Kongsberg Simrad makes its living through leading edge technology so when it moved 500 of its 900 employees into ultra-modern new offices just south of the city of Kongsberg, it decided to combine its computing and telephony into one system. Kongsberg wanted a cheaper way for its 24 international sites to communicate. It also wanted to improve customer relations and to use advanced telephony in its marine communications products. HP Norway installed what is Europe's largest Mitel Network Voice-over IP telephony system on a ProCurve Networking platform.

"We wanted to use Internet Protocol telephony to connect all our 20 sites around the world," said Kongsberg Simrad's operating IT manager, Stien Susrud. "They are hooked up by our WAN but that costs us a fortune to use over lines in the public network."

"We realized that if we could make all telephone calls between our sites within the IP network we already have then we could be doing all our telephony for free. That is the main benefit we were looking for."

The IP network had to be reliable, easy to maintain and cost effective to run and install. Kongsberg found all these benefits in a join Mitel Network/HP solution installed by HP Norway.

Virtually all hardware at Kongsberg is already HP and the new Mitel Network advanced server-based Voice-over-IP system also runs on a network based around HP's high performance ProCurve switches. These are designed to provide absolutely dependable connectivity that is fast, secure and always working.

In addition to providing cheaper connections between its worldwide offices, the Mitel Network/ProCurve system promises other benefits for Kongsberg's future.

"Not only will IP telephony be of benefit to our administrative systems but in the future it could also be of benefit for our products," added Susrud. "For example, if a boat is out on the ocean, it makes sense to use VoIP to contact it. It's much cheaper to send an IP packet via satellite to a boat than it is to send voice. This is the direction in which we aim to go for the future."

"We were looking for one system that includes computers, telephones and voice - everything in the same system. That is the trend we see out t in the market and HP provided us with a good and very cost effective solution."

• Five hundred employees in the new offices use what is the largest Mitel installation in Europe.
• Kongsberg is now rolling the cost cutting solutions out to its other worldwide locations.
• It is also looking at how to incorporate the system into improved customer relationships and new ship-to-shore communication products.

When you are ready to explore the benefits a ProCurve Networking solution can offer you, call HP at 1-800-975-7682.

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