Converged networks: The people at Rocket are confident that their streamlined IP Communications and networking infrastructure has positioned them well. Read this Cisco VoIP business solution case study.

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from Cisco Systems Inc.

Rocket Software has turned the promise of a globally integrated "virtual" company into a successful business model with IP-based communications and networking solutions from Cisco Systems that make software development faster, better, and more economical.

Background
Rocket Software is a 13-year-old independent software development company with headquarters in Newton, Massachusetts, branch offices in northern California and Arkansas, and some 200 employees and contractors throughout the world. The flourishing company's areas of expertise encompass business intelligence, database tools, data center management, security integration, and Windows utilities.

A "virtual" organization that has taken advantage of the ability to outsource overseas for several years, Rocket uses cutting-edge communications and networking technology to create workgroups that span the U.S. and reach as far as India and China. Furthermore, the company collaborates closely with its original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners through RocketTrack Partner Portals on its Web site. Key Rocket OEM partners include such familiar names as IBM, RSA Security, Microsoft, NEC, and Toshiba. The company also sells software directly to end customers.

Rocket excels at combining onshore innovation and offshore cost benefits to reduce development cycles and overhead, while delivering a level of responsiveness that ensures quality and minimizes partners' business risks. The company was named a runner-up in the Operational Excellence category of the Cisco ®Growing with Technology Awards 2003.

Challenge
The primary business challenge that Rocket faced was linking the company's computing resources, engineering talent, and partners in a close-knit collaborative environment that produces best-of-breed code in a timely, cost-effective manner. As Rocket CIO Troy Heindel puts it, "What keeps partners coming back is our ability to deliver products faster, better, and cheaper than they could do it themselves."

So when Rocket prepared to move to its new headquarters building in Newton, Mass., the company took the opportunity to sharpen its interactive capabilities by renovating the corporate telephony system and upgrading the network infrastructure. The company saw the benefit of investing in a solid infrastructure that would help enable growth and new services in the future. Rocket enlisted Cisco reseller NetTeks Technology Consultants to help meet the technical challenges. "Rocket had a very aggressive timeframe, less than a month to verify configuration and deploy the complete solution in the new location," says Scott Pintsopoulos of NetTeks. "We were brought in because of our flexibility and our experience with the local Cisco sales and engineering teams."

Rocket considers voice communications a crucial part of its business model. But the leased private branch exchange (PBX) systems installed at their headquarters and branch offices were no longer up to the job. The PBXs didn't support their own conferencing, unified messaging, and remote links—or would support them only with costly add-on equipment and carrier services. The analog systems were expensive to operate. And Rocket was unhappy with the maintenance delays and lack of control that resulted from the PBX leasing arrangements.