November 12, 2002

by Charles Waltner, News@Cisco

This November Cisco announced a significant list of portfolio improvements to its IP Communications product line. The diverse array of enhancements is aimed at improving collaboration and workgroup interactions by tapping the inherent efficiencies of a unified IP networking infrastructure. The new products represent a significant advancement in helping companies move away from legacy communications such as PBX phone systems.

News@Cisco recently spoke with Don Proctor, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Voice Technology Group, about the new IP Communications products and their ability to help companies save money with increased productivity.

You describe the new IP Communications enhancements as part of Cisco's concept of "Progressive Productivity." What is Progressive Productivity and how does it help companies?

Don Proctor: Progressive Productivity is about making information technology investments that not only help save money initially, but also continuously improve business productivity while lowering communications infrastructure costs. With Cisco's IP Communications products, companies initially save money by eliminating multiple networking infrastructures while making the communications applications easier for employees and IT staff to use. The IT staff can move, add or change employees from one building in the campus network to another building faster and more cost-effectively. As time goes on, companies can take advantage of more advanced features of IP Communications which make collaboration and communication easier among employees, partners, and customers. Applications such as Cisco Personal Assistant and Cisco's new IP Phone Messenger and IP Manager Assistant extend productivity benefits on Cisco's IP phones, allowing employees to access and change their communications rules on any IP phone without the assistance of the IT staff, increasing efficiency and flexibility. Other productivity benefits include better telecommuter integration with the main office; better remote communications with customers through video conferencing; less employee travel expenses thanks to better audio and visual communication; and a more efficient workforce due to a consolidated and unified communications infrastructure.

What are the issues and drivers for enterprises to become more productive in their work environments?

Don Proctor: Employees face an increasing volume of communications through a greater variety of options including phone, fax, email, video conferencing, instant messaging, and paging. These interactions are further magnified by the growing number of telecommuters, as well as a more mobile and dispersed workforce. As a result, simply communicating is a huge part of an employee's work time and productivity. The more efficiently an employee can conduct such crucial interactions, the more a company will benefit. The company will enjoy better collaboration among employees, partners and customers. Efficient employee communications can save the company significant money. The less time employees must spend trying to get in touch with each other and the more time they can spend focusing on business issues, the more productive they will be. Customer responsiveness becomes more immediate thereby strengthening existing customer relationships, which is essential in today's competitive environment. Cisco's IP Communications also helps organizations maximize their investment in other IT products, such as customer relationship management and other sales force software. All these benefits help companies build a better bottom line while improving their ability to service their customers.

What products are you announcing today and how do they aid in making enterprise communications more efficient?

Don Proctor: The list of new products and enhancements is long but they fall into five categories: unified messaging, call processing, audio/video conferencing, customer contact centers, and infrastructure. To help with unified messaging, the Cisco Unity 4.0 product is now fully integrated with Lotus-Domino, in addition to Microsoft Exchange. It supports communications protocols such as VPIM, AMIS and SIP. With these changes it becomes even easier for corporations and their employees to use a single message inbox for all communications, whether email, phone, fax, paging, etc.

For IP PBX features, we have created Cisco CallManager 3.3, which makes it easier for corporate IT or telecom staffs to manage a greater number of IP phone users. CallManager 3.3 also includes better PBX interoperability, allowing companies to smoothly transition from a legacy PBX to an IP-based telephony infrastructure. As part of Cisco's call processing improvements, we've also developed new, lower-cost IP Phones and IP telephony software to provide more features and to ease administration.

Also, the new Cisco IP Video Conferencing 3500 will help small to mid-sized companies cost-effectively use video conferencing to more easily collaborate with partners and customers. And the Cisco Conference Connection 1.2 provides integrated audio conferencing with Cisco CallManager. We've also created a simple, intuitive Web browser interface for managing, scheduling, and joining conference calls with our IP Phones.

For contact centers, the new Cisco ICM CTI Driver for Siebel 7 provides call agents with quicker access to critical customer information. This driver lets the Cisco Intelligent Contact Management (ICM) software integrate with the industry-leading Siebel CRM application, resulting in more productive telephone interactions between companies and their customers.

We're also introducing a menu of infrastructure equipment that brings all of the end-user applications together in one easy to manage network. The new equipment includes: the IP Telephony Environment Monitor, Voice Gateway Router bundles, an Intelligent Ethernet Switch, and the Catalyst Communications Media Module for highly scalable voice-over-IP.

How is Cisco's IP Communications system better or different than what customer can now buy elsewhere?

Don Proctor: Cisco designs its products from the ground up for IP networks, making them far more capable of integrating with corporate data networks and computing applications such as email, calendaring tools, and employee databases. Also, since our products run on converged voice/data networks, corporations avoid the unnecessary costs and complexities of needing to run more than one communications infrastructure. All applications and equipment speak the same language of data networking and the Internet.

Can you provide specific examples of customers who can demonstrate how they have used the Cisco IP Communications system to become more productive?

Don Proctor: We have over 6,000 IP Communications customers deployed worldwide that are reaping the productivity benefits of our IP Communications system. Two of the newest customers to deploy our system are Crate and Barrel and Burger King. Crate and Barrel, the home furnishings retailer, has been using 500 Cisco IP Phones and 450 Cisco Unity 4.0 unified messaging mailboxes for more than a year. Executives there report the company has significantly improved its ability to conduct sophisticated and streamlined interactions within the company, with its partners, and with customers. Crate and Barrel is already enjoying a significant return on investment that will only increase as its expands deployment.

Burger King is using 900 Cisco IP Phones with Cisco's Personal Assistant, Cisco Conference Connection, IP Video Conferencing and Cisco IP Contact Center solutions. Burger King used these to replace inefficient legacy communications systems at their headquarters. The fast food giant is increasing productivity and workforce collaboration while lowering costs with a consolidated communications network infrastructure. The company, for example, only has to train its IT staff on one set of skills for managing the Cisco IP-based network.