SYDNEY, Australia, April 21, 2005 - Cisco Systems® has recorded the sale of its 200,000th Internet Protocol (IP) phone in Australia, a milestone that demonstrates the wide-spread acceptance of converged communications in the Australian market. Cisco also leads the overall market for all business telephony in Australia in 2004, with a 15.3 percent market share, according to analyst firm Frost & Sullivan. Worldwide, Cisco has now shipped more than 4.4 million IP phones and is third in business telephony.
The 200,000th phone was deployed at FB Rice & Co Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys. FB Rice & Co chose to deploy Cisco IP Communications to help increase core business revenue and simplify operations. The Cisco solution includes the provision of gigabit to the desktop, Cisco Security Agent and Cisco IP softphones to facilitate a virtual-office environment for FB Rice & Co employees.
Bruce Hort, IT manager at FB Rice & Co, said; "Intellectual property practice is highly technical, time-critical, and confidential in nature. Combining voice and data onto a highly secure, IP-based system helps our attorneys meet these demands and serve our clients at the highest level. It also reduces our network operating costs and paves the way for a host of new applications such as integrated phone and customer relationship management (CRM)."
FB Rice & Co joins a long and growing list of organizations across a wide range of sizes and industries that are moving to IP Communications to save costs, increase productivity and improve customer service.
In Australia, Cisco has more than 600 customers using IP telephony, including AMP, Arnott's, Freehills, Lend Lease, NIB, Servcorp, Westpac and Woodside Petroleum. Worldwide, Cisco has sold more than 4.4 million IP phones to customers such as Bank of America, Boeing, Ford Motor Company and Merrill Lynch.
Australia is the first global market where Cisco has achieved total business telephony leadership. According to the Frost & Sullivan report, Cisco had 15.3 percent market share in all business telephony in 2004, despite the fact that Cisco does not sell traditional private branch exchange (PBX) telephony systems. This was an increase from 2003, where Cisco had 13.6 percent market share and ranked third. The report covers all phones systems sold to businesses, including key telephone systems, traditional PBXs, IP-enabled PBXs and Pure-IP telephony.
The report states that Cisco has the largest share of the Australian IP telephony segment of the voice market at 36.8 percent.
Foad Fadaghi, senior industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan, said; "Cisco has extended its market leadership throughout 2004 despite increasing competition in IP telephony in what is a highly fragmented market."
As well as upgrading from PBX-based telephony to gain the benefits of voice over IP (VoIP) telephony applications, Australian businesses are switching to converged communications to improve productivity through applications such as videoconferencing, contact-centre applications and workflow collaboration.
These applications support the increasing mobility of Australia's workforce. IP-based systems are being deployed in campus local-area networks (LANs), remote offices, the home and beyond in hotels and other areas where broadband access allows employees to use VPNs to connect to their corporate network and make phone calls.
Ross Fowler, managing director of Cisco Systems in Australia and New Zealand, said: "More and more businesses of all sizes are realizing significant business benefits from adopting IP Communications with Cisco and our business partners. Businesses are gaining productivity from Internet technologies such as IP Communications through the alignment of technology to business process."
Cisco's local reseller channel specialisation program has also boosted Cisco's Australian sales of IP telephony solutions. Twenty-eight channel partners participate in the program, receiving significant training and resources to help ensure that IP Communications deployments satisfy customer requirements.
