NewsUC&C11 Jul 2023 · 3 min read

Atos to Modernise Comms for Leading NHS Hospital

Atos has been awarded a five-year contract to modernise the communications infrastructure of The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

Kieran Devlin

Atos has been awarded a five-year contract to modernise the communications infrastructure of The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

Atos will install new hybrid, cloud-based technologies from its Atos Unify range. Unify's remote and distributed work solutions intend to support and enhance the hospital's role as a world-leading innovator in cancer research, diagnosis and treatment.

Atos will provide the Royal Marsden with an end-to-end hybrid comms solution, encompassing cloud paging, Teams integration and UC for static and mobile workers. These features aim to help staff communicate and collaborate straightforwardly in the age of flexible and remote working.

Samantha Jones, Senior Vice President, Atos UK, commented:

This new partnership with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust is a significant milestone in the work by Atos to drive innovation in healthcare. Providing a communications ecosystem with staff and researchers having access to fully integrated tools to communicate and collaborate with ease, means freeing up patient-centred resources."

Atos are also contracted to upgrade The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust's old legacy systems and provide new platforms and tech to empower the transformation to newer, more advanced and efficient systems.

Atos's offerings will be deployed at the Royal Marsden's state-of-the-art Oak Cancer Centre, a new research and treatment facility funded by The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity that will help accelerate the development of new cancer treatments, diagnose more cancers at an earlier stage and improve the patients' treatment experience.

"Unified communications services are critical to supporting both staff and patients, particularly in an age of hybrid working," added David Newey, Interim Chief Information Officer at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. "By modernising our legacy technology across our patient and research facilities, Atos will help to drive significant functionality improvements while ensuring that we continue our role as a leading innovator in cancer care and treatment within the UK and beyond."

The deployment of Atos Unify UC applications and innovative contact centre solutions aims to help the hospital continually deliver a high-quality experience.

Atos Currently in Talks to Sell Unify to Mitel

Mitel is currently in talks to acquire Unify from Atos, with Unify as Atos's UC and collaboration arm.

The transaction would reinforce Mitel’s position in multiple locales worldwide and strengthen the company’s commitment to offering choice and flexibility to its customers.

As a result of the acquisition, Mitel and Unify would become significant UC leaders in Europe and the Americas, with an estimated collective customer base of over 75 million users across over 100 countries. Their shared channel community would number more than 5,500 global partners.

The transaction would involve Mitel acquiring Unify’s voice platforms, collaboration and contact centre products, device and endpoint portfolio, and related intellectual property.

Atos and Unify

Atos launched Unify Office with RingCentral at the beginning of 2021, with both vendors having had an established partnership previously.

The co-branded UCaaS solution, called Unify Office (UO) by RingCentral, became the exclusive UCaaS offering for the vast user base of the Atos Unify product family. From cloud phones to team messaging and video, customers could access the services needed to work more effectively in a digital-first world.

Later in 2021, Atos and RingCentral brought Unify Video to Europe to support the evolution of the workplace. The standalone video with team messaging enhanced online meetings and supported teams in working smarter together.

Unify Video provided customers access to high-availability, high-quality meetings, which integrated quickly with team messaging, calendar, task, contact management, and file sharing. The resulting "Smart Video" experience was ideal for the modern workforce.

However, 2021 was a challenging year for the French company, and Atos' share price tumbled after it issued a profit warning stating it would miss financial targets. In a statement to investors, Atos said that revenue in 2021 was down 2.4 percent in constant currency to €10.8bn. The operating margin was around four percent against a target of roughly six percent.

Atos said that "project slippage" in UC and collaboration contributed to the revenue miss. The Mitel acquisition of Unify could represent a perfect opportunity for both companies, with Mitel potentially looking to reestablish itself as a leading vendor in UC.

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