Zoom Video Communications : How Gilead Sciences and Logitech Reimagined Their Telephony Strategy with Zoom Phone

Customer Stories, Phone System

How Gilead Sciences and Logitech Reimagined Their Telephony Strategy with Zoom Phone

Graeme Geddes

September 9, 20216 min read

As companies consider the transition from legacy PBX to cloud-based communications, savvy IT leaders are seeking telephony solutions that will support their changing business needs and growth for years to come. When Gilead Sciences and Logitech needed to refresh their outdated phone systems, they looked for a platform that offered a high level of flexibility and reliability to support their mobile teams and new hybrid work environments. They found the solution that best met their requirements was Zoom Phone.

During a conversation at this year's Enterprise Connect, Kevin Atkin, Director of IT collaboration at Gilead Sciences, and Mike Berry, Head of Telecom at Logitech, spoke about their companies' decisions to move to Zoom Phone. Both shared their stories of transitioning away from legacy telephony systems and the benefits of a UCaaS platform.

Flexibility is key for Gilead Sciences

Gilead Sciences, a global pharmaceutical company operating in over 35 countries, specializes in the discovery and development of innovative medicines like Tamiflu and remdesivir, a popular treatment for COVID-19. Gilead began its relationship with Zoom in 2018, using the Zoom Meetings platform to consolidate various other meeting solutions they had for internal and external users.

According to Kevin Atkin, director of IT collaboration at Gilead Sciences, 'Over the last 12 months, we've held over 520 million meeting minutes on Zoom; from a telephony perspective, we've used 42 million PSTN minutes on the Zoom platform. We've always considered Zoom audio quality to be far better than any of the other platforms we considered. So, of course, we wanted to try Zoom Phone. It was a very easy and straightforward decision.'

Gilead Sciences had been following a long-term strategy to move to UCaaS, but the pandemic escalated the company's plans. 'We needed to become more aggressive in our deployment of Zoom Phone, and Zoom provided tremendous support helping our work-from-home, multi-location workforce,' Atkin said. The company has, so far, deployed seven sites in Australia, the UK, Central Europe, and locations in North America. 'The biggest benefit of Zoom is its flexibility. Zoom Phone was able to accommodate the migration of all sorts of users, native users as well as BYOC, and we could leverage the carrier infrastructure that we already had.'

Atkin stated that interoperability, especially the Zoom-Microsoft Teams integration, was important to his company. 'The Teams integration provides a seamless escalation from a chat to a meeting or a phone call.'

According to Atkin, Zoom's implementation of its UCaaS platform has made life much simpler for infrastructure teams at Gilead. 'Our teams used to have to go through a testing and development cycle, then an implementation cycle, and then we needed to deal with life-cycle management. We had all of these activities to run through, plus we needed to make sure that everyone was trained in how to accomplish the activities. Now, all we primarily have to do is pay attention to the new features and capabilities that we're getting every few weeks. Zoom UCaaS has simplified and enhanced how we deliver technology and how we mold our teams.'

Gilead appreciates its strong partnership with Zoom, as Atkin will attest to. 'We continue to make further feature requests and Zoom continues to deliver.'

Logitech migrates 48 global sites to Zoom Phone in under six months

Logitech, recently named to Fast Company's annual list of the World's Most Innovative Companies (MIC) for 2021, is a multi-category company, best known for tools that help end-users interact with personal computers and meeting rooms. Its portfolio of products includes mice, keyboards, speakers, headphones, webcams, and video conferencing solutions.

Logitech, an early adopter of video collaboration, began using Zoom video communications long before Zoom Phone launched. 'We had been looking for a refresh for our phone environment for about three years,' Mike Barry said. 'After hearing about Zoom Phone, we shared our highest telephony priorities with Zoom and our respective teams ended up working through those priorities together.'

Logitech wanted easier administration for a small global telecom team and ease of use for its end users. They wanted a single solution for phone and video meetings. They needed the ability to use the phone application without having to go through VPNs. 'Zoom Phone allowed us to do all of that, plus gave us the added benefits of no more server upgrades, no more maintenance contracts, and a really simplified back end,' Barry said. 'Ultimately, we experienced ease-of-use for both admins and users.'

With the help of Zoom, Barry's team migrated 48 global sites to Zoom Phone. 'We accomplished this on a site-by-site basis. We had engaged a number of our sites for the 'proof of concept' phase. So that gave us the ability to move forward with a high level of ease. All 48 sites were finished in under six months, and Zoom really supported us all the way.'

Barry recognizes that his strong relationship with the Zoom team is key to how smoothly everything works. 'I really value our continued connection with Zoom. We regularly speak with our account manager and are able to get feedback really quickly from sales engineers. We feel that Zoom listens. Our feature requests are always met.'

Barry shared that Zoom users at Logitech love being able to transfer Zoom Phone calls to video calls so easily. And on the admin side of things, Barry says: 'The dashboard makes it really easy to get a clear view of the phone analytics. We always liked having the analytics for Zoom Meetings and now getting them for Zoom Phone is even more helpful. My team needed no additional training because they were so familiar with the dashboard for Meetings. The analytics let you see where and how the system is being used.

'We are really happy with the ease of administration we now have.'

Elevate your phone capabilities today

Zoom Phone, now with over 2 million paid seats, was recognized as a Leader in Gartner's 2020 UCaaS Magic Quadrant category, in the first year of eligibility.

Contact us today to learn more about Zoom Phone.

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