REDMOND, Wash. — April 3, 2013 — The Obama for America campaign selected Microsoft Lync
as the communications platform for hundreds of campaign staff in its
Chicago headquarters and in some states for the 2012 elections. The
campaign needed to upgrade from a private branch exchange (PBX) system
to a more flexible cloud-based solution that could scale and adapt to
support thousands of mission-critical calls in multiple locations at any
given time.
“When the campaign began in 2011, we couldn’t predict how big it
would get or when, so scalability and deployment efficiency were two of
the most important features for us,” said Rajeev Chopra, president of
the MIS Department Inc. in Chicago and chief information officer at
Obama for America. “Controlling our systems with Lync also provided much
more flexibility.”
As part of the deployment, the campaign’s primary phone number and
headquarters voter hotline were managed through Lync in order to handle
calls that numbered in the hundreds of thousands per day. Over 2,000
people were connected via Lync; this number increased at key points in
the campaign, such as during the debates and the Democratic National
Convention, and Lync was able to quickly and easily scale to meet
demand.
The ability to work from anywhere also created benefits that
expanded beyond the campaign staff and volunteers. Because they were
able to be fully mobile on Lync and move from the office to the field
without needing to transfer their phone number every time, the IT staff
was able to free up time and support other mission-critical activities
to keep the campaign running smoothly.
“It was really useful to see how Lync could adapt to the way our
multilocation operation works,” Chopra said. “We didn’t start with Lync
in every office, but we deployed it in our Chicago headquarters, and
those employees were able to seamlessly transition to the field while
retaining their infrastructure. This ensured their focus remained on
reaching out directly to voters and not on technology limitations."
“On election day, volunteers wanted to keep answering phones, even
when their relief had arrived. Instead of turning people away from
headquarters, we were able to plug them in, light up a port and place
them anywhere there was an empty desk,” Chopra said. “Our voter
protection hotline was able to be increased at any time.”
More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available on the Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.
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