Cambridge, January 2006 - Interwise® Inc., a global supplier of enterprise conferencing solutions, announced that IGT is using Interwise ECP Connect® as its standard enterprise IP conferencing solution. With the market for IGT's award-winning slots and games such as Cleopatra®, Double Diamond®, Megabucks® and Texas Tea® opening up around the world, Interwise has enabled IGT to serve its expanding customer base with outstanding efficiency and personal attention.
IGT is a manufacturer of computerized gaming machines, platforms, and systems. It offers the most extensive game library with tailored systems for all types of casino businesses and legal environments, as well as a premier suite of casino management applications called the IGT Advantage™ System. The system essentially functions as the "brain" behind casino operations -” doing everything from assessing "hot" and "cold" areas of the gaming floor, to revenue tracking, to slot controls and security -” it even maps the best way to comp a casino's loyal players.
Customizing and deploying each casino's management system and huge array of games is no small feat. It requires extensive knowledge sharing, interactive design, project management, and on-going support. To ensure a high quality experience for its customers and at the same time contain growing travel costs associated with system implementation and training, IGT deployed Interwise's enterprise IP conferencing solution.
Since deploying ECP Connect, virtual meetings have become an integral part of IGT's design, customization, implementation and training processes. Travel costs for these activities have been reduced while technical staff are able to interact with customers anywhere in the world more easily and more often. The product's value in communicating with customers prompted IGT's systems design teams to try using ECP Connect to enhance more of their own internal processes. ECP Connect usage has also spread organically to other departments, such as HR and finance.
One especially innovative group of system developers used the Interwise software to extend the reach of their existing brainstorming tool -” a large, computerized whiteboard used for mapping out new system modules -” to more team associates in other locations. As a tool made primarily for physical meetings, the whiteboard sessions excluded remote developers from the creative process.
The team hooked their whiteboard to ECP Connect and started application-sharing the board drawings in a web meeting and voila -” everyone could participate live in conceptualizing new designs! In giving new life to an older yet still valuable tool, the team also gained the ability to record its design meetings and all of their content (both participant activity and whiteboard drawings) for later use via Interwise.
In choosing a collaborative conferencing solution for the company, Shawn Derifield, Director of Systems Training for IGT, evaluated other major vendors alongside Interwise. "We looked for VoIP in the solution to be able to leverage our own network for live communications whenever possible," said Derifield. "We also wanted easy administration, ease-of-use for our end users, and reliable performance. High voice quality with low bandwidth consumption was a -˜must have'-” a capability that Interwise has designed well into its architecture. Also, we wanted to be sure that the technology would scale well to handle many events and many users without performance degradation."
