<p>Lancaster University is aiming to improve its learning and research environment with a new collaborative working and unified communications infrastructure.</p><p>The new infrastructure includes video conferencing facilities for all the university's 18,500 students, staff and researchers, and will support Lancaster's growing overseas student-base.</p><p>Lancaster University is ranked in the top one percent of universities in the world. It said its previous telephony infrastructure, consisting of three separate systems, had "become increasingly difficult for IT to manage" and the aging hardware wasn't providing the "always-on" communication it needed to operate as a world-class institution.</p><p>Ian Anderson, networking group leader, headed up the project at Lancaster University. He said: "Multi-institutional collaboration on research projects is becoming increasingly central to the university.</p><p><a href="http://www.cfoworld.com/operations/72082/lancaster-university-improves-learning-and-research-unified-communications">Keep reading...</a></p>