BT employs 110,000 people in the UK, of whom 60,000 engage in some form of flexible working, whether as roaming employees or home workers.

To help those workers access company email and messaging systems, BT became one of the first companies to implement Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

Initially rolled out as a pilot to 150 staff, the project will go fully live in the second half of this year. It will be extended via the introduction of Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 when the product becomes commercially available later this year.

As with other unified communications systems, Exchange Server 2007 merges multiple voicemail and messaging systems across the group and cuts costs by providing a unified inbox for all calls, email and instant messaging (IM) sessions.

BT solutions designer Jason Hawes says that test users of the product reported significant productivity benefits. They could simply click on a voice message in their Outlook inbox to listen to mail without inputting user name or password information, and could access the calendar, amend meeting requests and alert participants using voice commands.

OCS will combine Exchange Server 2007 with Microsoft’s Live Communications Server giving users access to a range of voice over IP, email, IM, video and collaboration tools from the familiar Office interface.

The company is also planning to roll out managed services based on OCS to its own customers.

‘We do have a vested interest in getting our technical and sales people up to speed with how the Exchange Server 2007 and OCS products work, but include staff who will always be classed as information workers. It is intended for quite a wide audience,’ says Hawes.

BT also hopes to use the video conferencing and collaboration features of OCS. Hawes believes integrating these tools into the standard Office interface will make them accessible to a broad range of less technical staff.

‘For people working on documents such as Excel spreadsheets, having other people in the same team being able to access those with just the click of a button will also improve productivity,’ says Hawes.