PETRO-CANADA CASE STUDY

Petro-Canada is one of the largest integrated oil and gas companies in Canada, with a significant international presence. With headquarters in Calgary, Alberta it employs around 4,800 employees worldwide.

The company used to be part-owned by the Canadian government. After the largest government divestment in Canadian corporate history the company is now independent. Petro-Canada stands 10th in the top 1,000 publicly traded companies in Canada and is ranked 1st by sales turnover in Alberta's top 100 companies.

The company created a platform for international growth in 2002 with the acquisition of the majority of German oil company Veba Oil and Gas' world-wide interests. Petro-Canada's international business unit (IBU) operations are centred in London, with additional major offices in Aberdeen, The Hague and Essen, and smaller offices in eight other locations.

Outside of Canada, exploration, development, production and marketing of oil and natural gas currently takes place in Northwest Europe, North Africa/Near East, and Northern Latin America. In 2004 the total earnings from the company's operations was $1.9 billion. Its capital programme for 2005 is a record $3.2 billion.

With such a diverse geography, Petro-Canada needed an integrated solution for its international offices that could handle current demand and keep pace with its strategic development - and a communications partner with the ability to design and implement the solutions they needed and provide on-going support and maintenance - both now and in the longer term. Central's proven track record in the design, implementation of integrated solutions, coupled with Mitel's expertise in the field of voice, video and data convergence, made them the ideal partner for Petro-Canada.

Andy Moore Team Leader ITS Projects and Planning, explains the challenges facing the company:

"Our existing Avaya INDeX system in the UK offices was obsolete and was maxed out, a new replacement system was needed for London and Aberdeen.

"At that time (summer 2004) we didn't know we would be moving offices and had recently signed a deal with network providers SPRINT for an IPVPN to connect our corporate headquarters in Calgary with all our other international sites, so we needed to take advantage of the benefits that VOIP offered to our organisation.

The tender process was stringent and lengthy and major manufacturers were invited to submit a bid to develop a new communications solution which included Nortel, Cisco, Alcatel, Avaya and Mitel Networks, working in partnership with Central.

The selection of a suitable vendor included a tailored self-assessment process. Each supplier was required to score themselves, their product and their global support package.

Andy explained that Central impressed the company throughout the bidding process and that not only did they achieve one of the best scores, it was also credible. Central were able to prove their ability to back up the score.

"First and foremost, Central's pricing was in line with our expectations. The sales team did an excellent job. They were believable, amenable and kept us in touch with what was going on.

"The quality of the support package was another key consideration. Central was able to provide us with a single, central support number for the whole of the IBU, which is a critical factor in a successful implementation.

After Central had won the bid they immediately proved their technical excellence. "We had an outage on our existing Avaya INDeX. The incumbent supplier believed a new part was required and couldn't deliver it within 24 hours. We called Central and their engineers rectified the problem within six hours. We then took out a support contract with Central for the remaining INDeX life cycle.

"Central have a big challenge in providing VoIP support for Europe, Latin America and N. Africa, but the way that both Mitel and Central have conducted themselves throughout the whole process, we are confident that we can put together a unified support Contract.

"Petro-Canada was impressed by the mix of simplicity and resilience in Mitel's solution. Mitel's fault-tolerance and redundancy was very impressive. They offered a fully clustered solution, all call severs support each other and if any site goes down, another kicks-in," added Andy.

The new solution for Petro-Canada features all the latest advances from Mitel. This includes the hugely popular Mitel 3300 Your Assistant with 5220 handsets and Impresa Speak@Ease Attendant. This is soon to be followed by the Mitel Teleworker solution, collaboration and conference bridging.

Phase one included the roll-out of the Mitel 3300 Your Assistant to every desk in London and Aberdeen with a small footprint in Calgary for travelling IBU executives. The 3300 ICP is a highly scalable IP-PBX and powerful desktop interface, which is leading the way in creating a unified communications platform.

A sophisticated feature-rich tool that works as a single, unified client, it provides robust call control, extensive features such as secure instant messaging, audio and video conferencing and full data collaboration modules. It supports a wide range of innovative desktop devices and applications for medium-to-large enterprises and eliminates the complexity of telephony and data collaboration, whilst improving communication capability - straight from the users' own desktop.

5220 Handsets are fully operational on all desks. This feature-rich, enterprise-class IP Phone has a multi-line, multi-button display, programmable feature keys, context sensitive softkeys and full-duplex hands-free and conferencing operation.

Mitel Networks' Impresa Speak@Ease Attendant is a TSpeech recognition-enabled personal dialler and automated attendant, which frees users from having to remember a myriad of telephone numbers and passcodes, eliminates the frustration of dialling extensions by spelling last names, and allows users to make calls and access sophisticated telephony features simply by telling the system what to do.

5310R conference units are deployed for senior managers. Their full duplex IP audio conference unit features exclusive acoustic beam-forming technology, which eliminates ambient room noise and sidebar conversations.

Andy continues:

"The installation went smoothly and none of our operations were put at risk. Central has delivered a future proof and workable design and also provides maintenance of all our systems. Speak@Ease has been a real success and has provided great value to all users.

"The solution will provide good ROI over 5 years and an easy upgrade and migration process along with a strong and demonstrable roadmap for the future."

Petro Canada is soon to implement Mitel Teleworker, which is an innovative method of supplying the mobility features of the Mitel system to homeworkers.

The Teleworker Solution enables businesses of all sizes to enjoy the benefits of teleworking through a low-cost, 'plug and work' solution that extends the corporate network to virtually any location. Businesses can now benefit from reduced overhead while users can be more flexible and productive in how they work.

It provides flexibility and familiarity through using a standard Mitel 5020/5220 IP Phone, transparent access to corporate voice and data services, high levels of security, seamless integration with Windows and Macintosh clients for access to the corporate data network and scalability with support for large numbers of remote workers.

Petro-Canada has embraced the new technology and is looking forward to a lasting partnership with Central and Mitel. The company is moving towards Unified Messaging with the Mitel 6510, the first unified messaging solution that features natural speech as a user interface for accessing, manipulating, navigating and responding to all messages in a single unified inbox. Speech Enabled Unified Messaging integrates with Mitel Networks Voice-over-IP (VoIP) servers and PBX platforms, as well as PBX's from other leading vendors.

Unified Messaging software has been provided for 50 users for testing and will be extended to all staff in the near future.

The company is using 'Enterprise Manager' to administer the system. This is a suite of management tools that allow simple configuration, control and management of Mitel's enterprise product portfolio. It allows access to multiple sites and systems from a single interface lowering business costs and increasing staff productivity. The ease of use and comprehensive control was an important factor in Petro-Canada choosing the Mitel solution.

Phase 2 will see the scheme extended to North Africa and Essen later this year and to Caracas, Trinidad and The Hague in 2006. The Hague is the next biggest office to London with more satellite offices plus installations in the North Sea, its implementation will be a complex operation.

"Mitel's Your Assistant has been a tremendous success amongst users and the 5220 has also been a big success, particularly the hands free option. There have been no issues with operators and the solution has added real value to end users. We particularly wanted the facility to hot desk between different locations, which we had in the UK with the INDeX. The Mitel solution will extend hot-desking to the entire IBU, giving users the flexibility to take their own extensions to other offices." Said Andy.

The relationship between Petro-Canada, Central and Mitel looks set to become a long term fixture. The team is currently reviewing the implementation of Mitel Navigator, a breakthrough communications device that radically enhances the meaning of voice, video and data convergence on the desktop.

A sleek, silver device, which is designed to fit neatly under a flat screen monitor, this unique IP Desktop communications control panel will work in conjunction Mitel Your AssistantT and supports both SIP and Mitel's IP Protocol (MiNet).

Andy continues:

"Petro Canada has a very vigilant IT security team who require a much higher degree of security checking than normal. A very thorough security check has been carried out, particularly for the Teleworker solution with regard to 'man in the middle attacks'. Mitel have been very responsive in helping us to prove how secure their product is.

"A resilience license was originally provided for 50% of users, but this is now going to be extended to all handsets, as a result of a Mitel 3300 failure in London. This does demonstrate that resilience has been tested in a real situation - and works.

"After our office relocation in May we held a meeting of user representatives and asked them to tell us 10 things that that went well about the move and 10 things that went badly and what could be improved. It was the phone system that came out top, not only due to the product but also due to the standard of Central's user training, which was excellent. When our staff came to work the day after the move weekend, everyone was able to use the new phone system straight away."