MANILA, Philippines - March 10, 2004 - Cisco Systems® announced today that the Philippine Stock Exchange, Inc. (PSE) is migrating its phone system to a state-of-the-art IP Communications system utilizing Cisco IP phones. The new system is expected to provide PSE with the ability serve its customers more efficiently and provide a platform to meet the stock exchange's communications requirements in the future, with productivity applications such as video conferencing.
"Last year, the PSE has shifted from paper-based to electronic dissemination of market information and corporate announcements via an online daily disclosure system. This move provides simultaneous and timely release of information to market participants and thus, improves operational efficiency and transparency," said Ed Ocampo, PSE's chief technology officer. "IP telephony is therefore the next step for us in providing optimal service to our stakeholders."
Cisco has been the leader in providing the technology globally as well as locally, and has the most IP phone installations in place in the Philippines today. There are 2.5 million Cisco IP Phones deployed in over 14,500 organizations worldwide to date. PSE's IP Phones are being deployed in its Ortigas-Tektite and Ayala offices and serve employees, traders and representatives of PSE members.
PSE's requirements for the new phone system were that it provides a lower total cost of ownership as well as mobility features for its users. Cisco's IP Communications system based on the Cisco Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data (AVVID) was a perfect fit for PSE and had the additional benefit of enabling a range of new services that legacy PBX (private branch exchange) systems could not support.
"We have been using the legacy phones for many, many years and weighed the impact of introducing a new phone system that may not have been familiar to our users but that would be cheaper to run and enable us to do more. In the end, we decided that IP telephony was the technology that would take us to the higher level. The nice thing was that most of our employees found it really easy to use," added Ocampo.
IP telephony combines multiple communication infrastructures, giving users access to voice, data and even video. This innovation decreases operational costs, simplifies maintenance, and increases workforce productivity. In addition, maintenance costs are minimized as activities such as moves, adds and changes can be performed automatically and free of charge.
In terms of features, the Cisco IP Phone can also be set up to store online telephone directories, download stock quotes and news, traffic and weather forecasts, and even allow users to make trades directly through the phone. As it is extensible markup language (XML)-based, the applications that can run on the Cisco IP Phone is limited only by the imagination of the company.
In the next few years, Ocampo sees PSE using the Cisco IP solution for integration with IP-based applications for productivity enhancement.
"Companies like PSE, with requirements that rely heavily on the efficient use of technology, are betting on IP Telephony to maximize their investment in communication and network infrastructure. The technology is mature, stable, and proving to be an improvement over the plain old telephone system. Cisco has also announced video telephony to our family of IP Telephony solutions and this brings unprecedented video conferencing quality to the desktop of every employee. This is another possible area for PSE to look at in the near future," said Luichi Robles, country manager, Philippines, Cisco Systems.
About Cisco IP Communications
Cisco's IP Communications solutions provide enterprise customers with the industry's most comprehensive portfolio of IP telephony, Rich Media Communications and IP Contact Center solutions for increasing productivity, lowering costs and extending quality communications to end users everywhere. More information about Cisco IP Communications is available at: http://www.cisco.com/offer/tdm_home/iptelephony/.
About PSE
The Philippine Stock Exchange, Inc. (PSE or Exchange) is a private organization that provides and ensures a fair, efficient, transparent and orderly market for the buying and selling of securities.
