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Flemish water supply company VMW chooses NextiraOne as its new communications partner

VMW (Vlaamse Maatschappij voor Watervoorziening) to invest 1.3 million Euros to standardise its solutions and outsource its network management

Brussels - 3 September 2010 -  Flemish water supply company VMW, which supplies water to around 2.6 million people in Flanders, has signed a company-wide deal with NextiraOne, Europe’s leading communications experts. This is a three-year contract with possible extensions of up to a further six years. NextiraOne will supply VMW with technology and services for its contact centre, data network, IP telephony system and services. NextiraOne will utilise technology from Alcatel-Lucent to carry out the work.

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VMW is the most important supplier of drinking water in Flanders. The organisation encompasses 80 production centres, 18 local service centres, four regional offices and a Brussels head office. With its head office due to relocate at the end of this year, VMW wanted to find a partner that could over its ICT management and replace and standardise its existing solutions, including the vital addition of a professional contact centre.  

“Six companies submitted proposals for this project earlier this year,” says Jan Hammenecker, VMW’s Director of Business Systems and Communications.  “It was already clear at the negotiation stage that NextiraOne stood out from the other candidates thanks to their impressive analysis of our needs, including our contact centre requirements. The company’s knowledge in the telephony field and their relationship with the vendor Genesys/Alcatel-Lucent also played an important role in our choice. It is also important to us that NextiraOne is our sole contact point, and that they take prime responsibility for the success of the project. A further deciding factor was NextiraOne’s Network Operating Centre (NOC) which they will use to continually monitor our own network.”

“The impending relocation of VMW’s head office will give the company the ideal opportunity to outsource its network management and to standardise its solutions across its widespread locations,” says Ingrid De Latte, NextiraOne’s Managing Director for the Benelux. “The first challenge for NextiraOne will be to get all aspects of the data network, the contact centre, the IP telephony system and the services operational before the head office is relocated. From next year onwards, we can begin to implement the Genesys and Alcatel-Lucent solutions in the regional offices. After that, there will be a further roll-out to the other networks and VMW’s switchboards,” adds Ingrid De Latte.

NextiraOne is Europe’s leading expert in communications services and has a direct sales and service presence in 17 countries, serving more than 60,000 customers.  The company  designs, installs, maintains and supports sustainable solutions to meet the communications needs of its customers - from voice, data and video to mobility, security and applications. Working with the world’s leading technology companies, NextiraOne provides end-to-end sustainable communications solutions to deliver measurable business benefits to its customers. The company counts many public utilities amongst its customers and has recently implemented a €3.5M Contact Centre and IP Telephony solution for Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, providing enhanced customer service for its Billing and Operations divisions which handle over 1.2 million calls each year.

ENDS

BACKGROUND INFORMATION FOR EDITORS

About VMW
The Flemish water supply company (VMW) is a full-service water company that provides services throughout the entire water chain. We use a 31,000km-long network of pipes to serve approximately 2.6 million customers in 170 Flemish municipalities. This makes us the largest drinking water company in Flanders. We look after 75 underground water collection facilities and 4 surface water collection facilities, which together produced a total of 137.5 million cubic metres or 137.5 billion litres in 2009. For more information, visit http://www.vmw.be/.

About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent is a trusted partner of service providers and other companies, and supplies voice, data and video communication solutions for end-users. As a leader in fixed-line, mobile and convergent broadband networks, IP technology and applications, Alcatel-Lucent utilises the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation centres in the communications industry. For more information, visit http://www.alcatel-lucent.com. You can also read the most recent Alcatel-Lucent blog posts on http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.

About NextiraOne
Headquartered in Paris, NextiraOne are Europe’s leading experts in communications services. The company designs, installs, maintains and supports all of its customers’ communications needs from voice to mobility, security and applications.  NextiraOne provides seamless, end-to-end communications solutions working with the leading technology vendors in the industry to deliver maximum business benefit to customers. 

Discover more at: http://www.nextiraone.co.uk and http://www.nextiraone-eu.com

*NextiraOne and the NextiraOne logo are registered trademarks of NextiraOne LLC

For more information:
Neil Moss
European Marketing Director
NextiraOne
Tel: +49 30 74107-6380
neil.moss@nextiraone-eu.com

Sheila Lashford
Splash PR
Tel: +44 (0) 7986 514240
sheila@splash-pr.biz

NextiraOne Benelux
Ingrid De Keyser
Tel: +32 2 718 84 09
ingrid.de-keyser@nextiraone.eu