blog Just how many suppliers of corporate telecommunications services are there currently in Australia? According to a media release issued by Telstra this morning, there must be at least eight … because that’s the number which Medibank Private was using prior to rationalising them all down to just the big T.
I’ve got a number of questions about this deal … namely: How the hell was Medibank Private — a huge corporation — even using eight different telecommunications suppliers in 2015 to start with? Why has it taken the company so long to consolidate the numbers of suppliers down? And since when, as Telstra detailed in its media release, has Telstra been selling Skype for Business services (owned by Microsoft) as part of its service offering?
Anyway, to ponder all these things and more, here’s the statement issued by Telstra. Perhaps, gentle readers, you can make more sense of this than I could. It would be interesting to hear directly from anyone who works in Medibank Private to help explain the situation.
“As Australia’s largest private health insurer, Medibank Private provides health insurance and critical health advice to 3.9 million members nationwide. To enhance these services through improved innovation and new technologies, Telstra has been selected as Medibank’s exclusive telecommunications partner in a three-year multi-million dollar contract.
By consolidating its eight previous suppliers down to just one, Telstra, Medibank will save 37 per cent on its telecommunications.
The new partnership will not only place Medibank at the top of the curve when it comes to meeting the expectations of both employees and customers, but also enhance service levels to make the health journey a smooth one.
Aside from health insurance, Medibank also provides complementary services including health management and telehealth services for government and the private sector, where it delivers a broad range of nurse triage, GP, counseling and mental health services nationally, with related call volumes exceeding two million calls per annum.
“As a diverse and far reaching business, we depend on our telecommunications to support our members and to provide critical health advice to Australians when they need it most. Our new, enhanced partnership with Telstra means we can streamline and consolidate our network into one provider, transforming the customer experience,” said David Koczkar, Chief Operating Officer for Medibank.
Telstra will refresh LAN and WAN equipment to mitigate network risks and improve capability, while delivering the latest in enterprise mobility services. Telstra will also provide a collaborative environment through the use of Skype for Business across its corporate office and retail locations. The managed cloud solution will change employee interactions, increase information sharing and enhance convenience; all crucial factors in any flexible working environment.
Medibank is also the first customer to implement Telstra’s Mobile Business Fleet Plus plans designed specifically for business customers, which will provide Medibank with greater value and returns from its use of data across all devices and platforms.”
Quick google search of ‘Telstra Skype for Business’ it puts it at the top result:
https://www.telstra.com.au/business-enterprise/solutions/collaboration-conferencing/cloud-collaboration/skype-for-business
Looking at that web page, it appears it fits in with the other big MS product that Telstra collabs in their Data Centres, in this case, Office 365.
Businesses have been able to for a while now, organise Office 365 for Business via Telstra and I believe have all the data stored here in Australia instead of overseas like Microsoft itself was doing (until recently of course).
No idea about the particulars of the agreement, or what companies they had on their hitlist for possibles with regards to internet connections, but surely they could have saved even more money by going with a different ISP to Telstra (maybe Telstra were the cheapest, I don’t know).
Archive.org shows the first record of this page as September 6, 2015. Skype for Business does seem to fit with the other offerings, but it’s very new. I wonder if Medibank got a special deal.
I wonder if MS actually partnered with Telstra in order to boot up ‘their’ infrastructure in Aus.
Skype for Business, formerly known as Lync, formerly known as Communicator. So it uses your GAL from your Exchange architecture as the address book.
Basically it’s Microsoft’s IP Telephony solution.
Ah I see:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Lync-is-now-Skype-for-Business-%E2%80%94-see-what-s-new-aba02d7e-c801-4a82-bccd-e7207240f612
So it basically has almost nothing to do with Skype at all.
Well not exactly Renai. MS as we all know purchased Skype a while ago, and has now obviously merged the two technologies. You can also use Skype for Business to communicate with Personal Skype accounts (provided they meet a set of conditions longer than your arm).
So yes Lync was recently renamed to Skype for business, with obvious backend changes to match.
Interesting. What is the integration like between the two?
I can see there has been a bunch of development happening while I’ve been out of the loop working in Parliament :)
Also formally known as MS chat
I thought it was called “Office Communicator” for a while too?
Telstra started to offer Skype4B as a hosted offering three or four months ago. There were press releases from Telstra at the time.
Medibank already run Lync 2013 in their HO location in Melbourne, so this is just a relocation of Lync as an On Premise solution to Telstra’s hosted offering.
Nothing earth shattering at all really, except the addition of retail stores.
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