Charity Takes e/pop On Board

Published 21st August 2006

OM Ships International Uses e/pop to Link Vessels and Land-based Offices...

WiredRed, the leader in enterprise-scale real-time communication software, today announced that OM Ships is using its web-conferencing software to allow the charity's various managing offices and ships to communicate, share ideas and plan upcoming projects on its agenda.

Headquartered in Mosbach, Germany, OM Ships International is a Christian charity, which owns the worlds largest, floating bookstores in the form of two ocean-going vessels. To date these ships have visited over 150 countries around the world to provide educational resources to less fortunate people. As well as providing reading material, the charity coordinates aid and development projects with local communities that the ships visit.

OM Ships International has a network of land teams in 30 different locations worldwide, which pre-arrange the projects to ensure that all governmental and shipping regulations are met. Due to the team being dispersed throughout the globe, effective communication is paramount in ensuring that all new projects are managed efficiently and all the existing projects run according to plan.

"We were looking for an appropriate communication tool, which proved to be somewhat problematic, as the connections - particularly on the ships- have very low bandwidth," explains OM Ships International Director of Information and Communication Technology, Kirk Wilson. "We tried a selection of web-based conferencing solutions, which combined voice and real-time group working, however none fared too well via the local connections, which vary from DSL to dial-up, until we came across WiredRed' e/pop."

OM Ships International discovered e/pop web-conferencing software from WiredRed and implemented a five-user license to allow the various managing offices and ships to be linked up. e/pop offers the solution to organisations looking for a convenient and secure form of communication. By allowing organisations to liaise via voice and video over IP, they can share ideas, applications and desktops in real-time, giving users the ability to conduct online meetings and training seminars with anyone, anywhere, at any time.

"The ability that e/pop gives us to speak and share our desktops in real time, is ideal for our organisation, as it is important for us to collaborate on upcoming projects with our teams worldwide," comments Wilson.

"It's great to see how this charity can benefit from using e/pop and better its communication network - ensuring that its projects are executed smoothly," says WiredRed UK MD Tom Sloan. "It's certainly an example of how people can now communicate regardless of their location over the Internet - in a similar way that they would do face-to-face."