University of Pennsylvania adopts cloud communication solution

The University of Pennsylvania is upgrading communications across all departments with a cloud communication solution from Vonage. This agreement is set to integrate communications for faculty and staff on its main campus in Philadelphia, PA.

This agreement, signed by University of Pennsylvania’s Information Systems & Computing Department (ISC) will provide an interdepartmental integrated communication channel. Consequently, this channel will facilitate communication for more than 14,000 faculty and campus staff.

The university has opted to award an initial contract for five years to Vonage for its integrated, unified communications solution to unite and better manage its communications network across all campus departments. Vonage, a global leader in business cloud communication solutions, is set to roll out the unified communications solution across all departments from the beginning of this year.

This cloud communications solution will provide faculty and staff with the ability to connect with each other no matter where they are on campus.

Further, University of Pennsylvania’s ISC department anticipates to roll out the cloud communication provider’s offering as part of its “Next Generation” initiative sometime in early 2020:

“Vonage shares the University of Pennsylvania’s vision of a cloud first, next generation future,” said James Roth, vice president, Applications Group East for Vonage.

He also added, “We are thrilled to partner with Penn on their digital transformation journey, providing them with the tools and innovative solutions they need to support and serve not only their faculty and staff but also their students and the greater academic community.”

Users will benefit from messaging and presenting capabilities, audio and videoconferencing tools and a mobile and desktop app which will improve communication speeds. Furthermore, this partnership is expected to improve the efficiency of the university’s IT staff by reducing maintenance time.

In addition to this, the cloud-based communication solution will automate everyday tasks. Improvements involve improving efficiency of making changes to accounts, as well as adding new users and setting up workflows, according to a news announcement.

In addition to that, as the university continues to grow digitally, Vonage products offer the institution the ability to scale and integrate additional Vonage services. Subsequently, these integrated solutions will incorporate cloud-based contact center capabilities and APIs to enable embedded and contextual communications with external partners.

The rise of cloud-based technology on modern campuses

Cloud communication facilities on campus is a growing demand on modern campuses. In fact, this faculty forms a large part of integrated campus management systems devised to increase staff productivity and improve administrative processes.

Traditionally, on-campus communications are limited to physical and hardware barriers. However, cloud solutions have removed all of that through the support of wireless technology which provides a virtual plane for scalable access.

Separating from hardware-bound limitations has the added cost-saving benefit-campuses no longer require equipment and software that requires regular maintenance and updates.

Instead, service providers host the platforms in the large-scale data centres which form the physical backbone of the internet and sell access to those platforms by subscription.

Modern campuses and businesses are increasingly challenged with volatility and unpredictability. Evolving work patters have largely removed the need for on-site work locations.

In fact, more and more staff are required to dial in from remote locations.

In addition, the scalability of business is also supported by cloud technology where campuses will be able to customise cloud communication platforms based on evolving needs.

A cloud communication platform provides not just the opportunity to meet these needs, but also provides the tools that effectively enable integration to other platforms.

Lastly, universities are increasingly seeking cloud-based solutions to meet data security requirements. Cloud-based technology is simply more secure than traditional physical communication infrastructure – in fact, the industrial scale data centres on which the internet is built, is built to run on extremely high security and resilience standards.