SAN JOSE, Calif., February 27, 2006 - Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced that one of the world's top financial services organizations, State Street Corporation, has deployed a Cisco Internet Protocol (IP) Communications system that has improved network availability and response time for voice and data applications and reduced administrative and telecommunications costs for the company.
The new Cisco IP-based infrastructure is providing the Boston-based State Street organization with enhanced disaster recovery capabilities. With a centralized and virtualized call processing and voice application architecture, State Street is prepared to add, change and grow applications, increase capacity on demand and increase the efficiency of its network administrative staff. IP-based solutions are among Cisco's Financial Markets Solution portfolio for the financial services industry, which allow financial professionals like those at State Street to increase the value they provide their customers with improved service quality, timeliness and operations.
State Street, which has more than 21,000 employees worldwide, began its deployment of an IP-based infrastructure by implementing a Cisco CallManager call processing system to support 600 employees in a new office in Massachusetts and has now expanded this system to more than 10 offices worldwide. State Street now has more than 6,000 Cisco IP phones deployed to date.
In addition, the Cisco 3800 Series Integrated Services Router (ISR) is used at the small branch offices. Two Cisco 3800 Series ISRs configured with Hot Standby Routing Protocol (HSRP) and Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) features, provide business continuity by allowing voice services to continue in the event of a wide area network (WAN) failure.
"Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gives us the capability to provide dramatic technology advancement while controlling costs and improving efficiency in our business," said Madge Meyer, executive vice president of global infrastructure services at State Street. "For example, we have a large number of office moves. With VoIP, the phones are more closely linked to individuals, exploiting easy network mobility so we don't need a large team to handle moves, adds and changes. The Cisco solution also reduces the need to manage separate infrastructures and incur the large duplications of cost associated with maintenance and remote support of multiple locations. Cisco CallManager helps enable us to smoothly introduce a variety of productivity-enhancing applications into our phone system, such as paging, trading environment applications and intelligent contact center support."
State Street also added Cisco IP Contact Center Enterprise Edition (IPCC) to provide business unit support for clients and customer contact centers. Cisco IPCC Enterprise provides intelligent contact routing, call treatment and network-to-desktop computer telephony integration (CTI). This helps State Street enhance customer service by integrating its inbound and outbound voice applications with Internet applications including real-time chat, Web collaboration and e-mail.
"As we migrate our teleconferencing, videoconferencing and audio conferencing onto a single backbone, we'll see additional savings," said Meyer. "The Cisco solution has already improved network performance by 10 to 25 percent and reduced overall expenses. Our executives and our customers are all very pleased with the new technology. It's a win-win solution for us."
