Amcom has won a 13,000-user rollout of Cisco's Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) for the University of Melbourne – the largest public sector rollout of the product in the country, according to Cisco.
The win is Amcom's largest single UC contract, as well as its first major deployment in higher education after signing a partnership with academic network provider AARNet in May.
Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.
University of Melbourne is the first university in Australia to move to the Cisco hosted collaboration platform, according to an Amcom statement. The platform will be rolled out across eight campuses in metropolitan and rural Victoria via Amcom's ACC product.
While the university already used Cisco for IP telephony, the new deployment will be a "real step up", Amcom chief executive Clive Stein told CRN. "Like most they may have video rooms or video conferencing, but the full integration across the whole organisation is what this platform does."
Features include telephony, video telephony, voicemail, instant messaging, presence and collaboration on tablets and phones. Stein described the rollout as a "flexible contract", with the University retaining the ability to turn on and off features. The university will also be able to access telepresence, WebEx and contact centre features.
Amcom signed an agreement with AARNet in May to offer AAC to the company's customers, including 38 universities and the CSIRO. AARNet serves over one million end users.
"What we see is tremendous potential. Obviously higher education is capital constrained; they are looking at simplifying their procurement processes," said Stein.
The AARNet partnership is expected to lead to other "significant" ACC contracts, according to Amcom.
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