SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 28, 2004 -- Cisco Systems® today announced that Bank of America is now beginning its deployment of 180,000 Cisco® Internet Protocol (IP) telephones throughout 5,800 banking centers and enterprise locations in 29 states and the District of Columbia.
This significant deployment, which will occur in phases over the next three years, marks another major customer milestone for Cisco and falls on the five-year anniversary of the first public unveiling of the Cisco IP Phone 7900 Series handsets and the launch of the Cisco Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data (Cisco AVVID) in September 1999. Systems integrator EDS will help Bank of America transition to its new voice and data network infrastructure.
"The Cisco IP Communications system allows us to eliminate hundreds of private branch exchanges (PBXs) in favor of a single, centralized, IP-based call control system," said Steve Venezia, managing director of the network computing group and network services for Bank of America. "This will help us realize operational and telecom cost savings as well as improved system management and employee productivity."
Bank of America, one of the world's largest financial institutions, will eliminate a disparate collection of 362 PBXs in favor of a converged Cisco IP Communications system. As a result, the bank will replace the disparate voice environment that services its branch and remote enterprise offices with a voice architecture and design based upon standardized products that will deliver ubiquitous voice services across the organization.
Venezia says the new Cisco IP Communications system provides a cost-effective, robust, resilient and flexible solution that will meet the bank's current and future needs. Initial productivity gains will come from:
- Unifying more than 100,000 employee voice-mail boxes installed on a variety of voice messaging platforms with a single Cisco UnityTM voice messaging system
- Integrated access to data from enterprise business applications
- Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based applications customized for specific bank departments and lines of business
- Greater employee mobility through increased telephony features and improved access to communication tools
- The ability to simply deploy and extend contact center resources to multiple locations
"Today's announcement with Bank of America illustrates how the Cisco IP Communications system allows companies to cost-effectively enhance interaction with their customers by creating a seamless communications environment," said Rick Moran, vice president of the Product Technology Marketing Organization for IP Communications at Cisco. "The capabilities of the Cisco IP Communications system go well beyond those of traditional systems, which better prepares Bank of America and other organizations for today's business challenges."
