InTechnology has won a contract to provide cloud telephony and unified communications to the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

The agreement meets the need for a school-wide communication and collaboration platform to support its academic and administrative staff.

The agreement includes the provision of over 3,000 telephone handsets, 1,000 softphones, the enhanced features that Microsoft Lync offers, 100 days of training, and round the clock support, all hosted on a resilient infrastructure. Calls can be routed across Janet, the UK's research and education network.

Natalie Duffield, Director at InTechnology, says: "Our proven capability, capacity and experience have enabled us to meet the challenge of transitioning LSE's legacy end-of-life telephone systems to a modern communications system that will bring the School real savings in capital spend and lowered overall total cost of ownership over the next five years.

"The LSE's choice of InTechnology over our competitors, is testament to our focus on business-grade Cloud services supported by best-of-breed technologies, such as Broadsoft, Microsoft and Polycom."

Adrian Ellison, Assistant Director, IT Services at LSE says: "The adoption of InTechnology's cloud-based service will provide LSE staff with a wide range of tools that will not only improve communication but also deliver the potential to save on travel and the associated impact on sustainability, through the collaboration facilities provided by the solution.

"InTechnology were chosen for their value proposition, the tight integration between the Broadsoft hosted telephony platform and Microsoft Lync, and for their commitment to the higher education community.

"Together InTechnology and LSE have devised a model services agreement, which it is hoped will pave the way for other education institutions to take advantage of Cloud-based communications. Licence types have been tailored for academic users."

Tim Marshall, CEO of Janet, says: "The LSE's investment is a bold move from a progressive institution and points the way forward for other education institutions looking to increase cost efficiencies while converging their telephony connectivity with their Janet IP network provision. We especially welcome the LSE and InTechnology approach which has developed a model contract that other Janet-connected institutions can benefit from."