SAN JOSE, Calif., April 28, 2003 - Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced a robust and cost-effective set of new Internet Protocol (IP) telephony products and enhancements that extend the reach and benefits of its IP Communications system to a wider range of users in both small and large organizations.
The new products enhance productivity and allow greater mobility in the workplace while also improving business resilience. Today's announcement features three new IP phones, the Cisco® Wireless IP Phone 7920, the Cisco IP Phone 7912G and the Cisco IP Phone 7902G, as well as new enhancements to IP-based hardware and software.
The easy-to-use Cisco 7920 provides employees in hospitals, warehouses, retail stores, universities and other highly mobile work environments with reliable access to Cisco IP Communications systems, anywhere in the workplace at anytime. The phone operates seamlessly over intelligent IP network infrastructure with Cisco Aironet® Series IEEE 802.11b compliant wireless access points. For companies such as Trimble, a leading innovator of GPS, laser and optical positioning technologies for commercial markets, the Cisco Wireless IP Phone 7920 is a perfect fit for its dispersed employee base. The company has more than 2,000 employees across 20 countries and will initially deploy the wireless phones across its sites in the United States.
"The Cisco 7920 phone gives us wireless mobility and access to the telephony features of our IP Communications system no matter where we are on our campus," said Stanley Ching, corporate network manager for Trimble. "For instance, if an operations manager wants to contact someone across the country in our regional fulfillment center, he or she can talk with that person immediately. There is no need for overhead paging, sending email or leaving a voicemail message. Using the Cisco 7920, our employees have flexible, reliable, real-time communications in a distributed environment. We have tried many different types of technologies in the past including pagers, cell phones and walkie talkies, but nothing has worked as well as the Cisco 7920 phone."
The new Cisco IP Phone 7902G and Cisco IP Phone 7912G join the Cisco IP Phone 7905G as the entry-level models in the broad Cisco IP phone portfolio. These feature-rich telephones priced on par with digital PBX phone sets extend the productivity and mobility benefits of Cisco IP Communications to a broader range of users in both large business sites and small and branch offices. To simplify deployment, the Cisco 7902G and the 7912G deliver the same in-line power and automatic configuration features as the entire portfolio of Ethernet Cisco IP phones.
Hardware and Software Enhancements
Cisco is also announcing today several enhancements to hardware and software that increase productivity, mobility and business resiliency. The enhanced products include: The Cisco Catalyst® 4500 Series Access Gateway Module, Cisco CallManager Attendant Console 1.2, Cisco IPVC Gateway 2.0, Cisco Survivable Remote Site Telephony 3.0, and the Cisco Media Convergence Server 7800 Series
"The business case for implementing a Cisco IP Communications system is increasingly driven by measurable gains in end-user productivity," said Don Proctor, vice president and general manager for the Cisco Voice Technology Group. "Investments that increase the productivity of end users have a more compelling ROI than investments that only focus on IT support costs. If an enterprise makes an investment that increases the productivity of 5,000 end users by only 2 percent, that is like adding 100 more people to your staff."
Aspen Valley Hospital Quantifies its Productivity Benefits
For Aspen Valley Hospital, a 49-bed community hospital located in Aspen, Colorado, the Cisco IP Communications system provides monthly savings of approximately $15,000 based solely on the productivity enhancements the system provides for its 500 employees. The productivity is linked directly to a usage analysis of the hospital's 350 Cisco IP phones at its main site and an additional 150 IP phones at eight clinics and billing centers it operates.
"Before we installed the Cisco IP Communications system, we didn't understand all of the productivity benefits that we could offer our physicians, patients and business partners," said Pete Sebenaler, materials management supervisor for Aspen Valley Hospital. "Our doctors can now move between the hospital and clinics using the same telephone or Cisco IP Softphone. With Cisco UnityTM unified messaging, we can access a single e-mail inbox for voice and data messages from either a telephone or a computer. And we have the flexibility to create critical XML-based applications to run on our phones in the emergency room."
For more information about today's announcement, including pricing and availability information, please visit: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/ip_phone_pricing_sheet.pdf
