Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel will soon redefine the guest experience through a technology deployment that is built on a unified communications platform from Cisco. To be designed and built by Cisco-certified systems integrator 3D Networks, Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel's planned technology adoption marks a shift in unified communications deployments in Singapore from simple private branch system (PBX) replacement to true workspace transformation.

When the first phase is completed in May, guests at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel will get an experience that few other hotels in the world can deliver, with in-room touch-screen full-colour Cisco Unified IP (Internet Protocol) Phones providing access to a range of hotel and business support services. A robust, high-speed wireless infrastructure will enable them to access those same services, including video on demand, from anywhere in the hotel. Hotel staff will be equipped with Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phones to provide them with access to intranet resources that will help them attend to guest requests in a timely fashion.

"We were thoroughly impressed by the technology vision that Cisco and 3D Networks presented to us. Our aim is very simple: We want to make all our guests feel that they are the center of the world, and in this technology-driven world, that means providing services that they are used to in their office or homes from the basic anytime, anywhere wireless Internet access to luxuries such as music streaming from their MP3 players to the in-room audio system," said John Sartain, general manager of Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel.

The Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel is in the vanguard of forward-looking organizations in Singapore that are looking beyond unified communications as being just a replacement for legacy PBX systems. For these companies, unified communications has the potential to transform the workspace by integrating effective communication and collaboration solutions, including messaging, voice, video, Web conferencing and unified communications clients.

"Cisco has been at the forefront of unified communications from the early days when it was known simply as IP telephony. By integrating voice, video, data, and mobility over an IP network, Cisco's unified communications solutions help organizations like Grand Copthorne to enable easy collaboration every time, everywhere, for their customers and their employees. Cisco continues to innovate and push the technology envelope with solutions such as Cisco TelePresence and acquisitions such as WebEx," said Benny Lee, managing director of Unified Communications Solutions for Cisco in Asia Pacific, who delivered the keynote at Cisco Unified Communications Summit.

Cisco's success in unified communications is aided by trusted channel partners such as 3D Networks that have a rich history in deploying legacy PBX systems and have themselves re-engineered their businesses toward unified communications.

"There's no doubt that we are at the beginning of a shift in user adoption trends in unified communications. We are very excited by this project at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel as it will enable us to create a unified communications showpiece for the region. This also deepens our relationship with Cisco further and we look forward to taking the experience from this engagement into the other parts of our business around the region," said Steve Hampson, CEO of 3D Networks.