HP today announced that Underwriters Laboratories (UL) has selected HP Networking solutions to improve the efficiency of its technology infrastructure and increase knowledge sharing among employees and customers through unified communications and collaboration (UC&C).

UL has been certifying consumer product safety and assessing compliance for more than 115 years. Each year, more than 20 billion UL marks appear on products from 72,000 manufacturers in 98 countries. However, growth of the company created challenges for an outdated technology infrastructure, hindering its ability to keep pace with customer demand or maintain a competitive advantage.

With the new UC&C solution provided by HP, UL has improved collaboration and communication among its 68 testing and certification facilities and labs. The solution integrates communications on a single enterprise-wide platform, supporting any method (voice, chat or email), location or device. As a result, UL can rely on real-time, integrated knowledge exchange among employees, partners and customers that increases overall business productivity.

UL’s UC&C solution incorporates Microsoft, Avaya and HP networking technologies to deliver unified messaging and instant messenger capabilities, as well as collaboration and voice services. This includes HP A-Series A12500 and A5500 switches. UL also has deployed HP E-Series E5400 and E8212 switches, and E-MSM760 Wireless LAN (WLAN) controllers with the E-MSM422 WLAN access points.

UL replaced 23 private branch exchange (PBX) systems with a single centralized solution for voice communications. The solution streamlines IT management with standardized desktop configurations for employees supported on a common network infrastructure. This enables UL to offer faster, higher quality and more customer-friendly services, which in turn allows manufacturers to accelerate the product life cycle – from research to manufacturing to recycling..

“UL continually seeks to improve collaboration among our customers as we become even more integral to how manufacturers develop and deliver safer products to market,” said Christian Anschetz, senior vice president and chief information officer, Underwriters Laboratories. “HP provided a roadmap to transform our network infrastructure to achieve these business goals while also supporting our plans to move towards a converged infrastructure that will further streamline IT operations and reduce costs.”