SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 27, 2010 – Cisco today celebrated a major milestone with the distribution of its 30 millionth Internet Protocol (IP) phone to one of the world's largest banking and financial services institutions, HSBC. As part of a standardization strategy to enable a uniform groupwide global standard, HSBC has already deployed over 100,000 Cisco® Unified IP Phones across 87 geographic locations.

HSBC is using Cisco's Unified IP phones and Cisco Unified Communications Manager as they have found that standardization, consolidation and simplification further improves system performance, helps increase organizational agility and reduces the cost of supporting infrastructure. In addition, intelligent call routing, a single directory and a standardized dial-plan foster greater employee collaboration to help HSBC develop strategies to serve its customers better. By providing device identity, digital signed images, call tracing, and call recording, Cisco's IP phones provide HSBC with enterprise-level security to keep conversations of a sensitive nature confidential, as well as providing support for various device functions and applications directly on the handsets.

Having begun the deployment of the Cisco Unified IP Phones over 18 months ago, HSBC is halfway through a three-year global program that will result a total installed base of 354,000 Cisco devices by the end of 2012. With investments in communications and collaboration technologies such as Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Unified IP phones and Cisco WebEx, HSBC is aiming to significantly lower its carbon dioxide emissions by reduced business travel in 2012.

Cisco made its first Voice over IP phone call in 1997 and sold its first Cisco Unified IP Phone in 1998. In the last 13 years, Cisco Unified IP Phones have evolved beyond voice to connect people with video technology, and act as interfaces to networked applications, services and content. They are part of a new collaboration experience that is rich, integrated, mobile, and often virtualized.

Supporting Quotes:

• Gary Phillips, Global Head of IT Operations, HSBC

"At a time when the economic climate demands that financial institutions have an even closer interaction with their clients, Cisco's IP phones and other communications technologies have provided HSBC with a means to communicate and address the needs of our customers via reliable, innovative and cost effective solutions," said Gary Phillips, Global Head of IT Operations, HSBC. "Cisco's collaboration technology helps further enhance HSBC's relationship with its customer base and ensures that we provide the best service to drive consistent and continued client satisfaction."

• Zeus Kerravala, analyst, Yankee Group

"The shipment of 30 million IP phones is a significant benchmark for Cisco in the unified communications and collaboration market," said Zeus Kerravala, analyst, Yankee Group. "Cisco has been both a pioneer in legitimizing VoIP as an alternative to traditional telephony but also an innovator as it has maintained its competitive lead over the past decade."

• Barry O'Sullivan, senior vice president, Voice Technology Group, Cisco

"Selling our 30 millionth IP phone to HSBC shows how quickly Cisco Unified Communications solutions have been adopted over the last 13 years since that very first IP Phone was developed," said Barry O'Sullivan, senior vice president, Voice Technology Group, Cisco. "Through the use of Cisco's IP phones and other video and voice collaboration technologies, we are pleased that HSBC can provide the type of excellent client service that is the cornerstone of its business."

Key Facts / Highlights:

• Notable features of Cisco's IP phones used by HSBC, include:
• Color liquid crystal displays, including dynamic soft keys for call features and functions
• Support for information services, including Extensible Markup Language capabilities to extend IP phone systems
• The capability to customize XML-based services to let users access a variety of information, such as stock quotes, employee directories, and Web content
• An enterprise-grade level of security essential for the banking environment
• Tools to reduce operations costs by centralizing the administration of the phones and offering a platform for enterprise-wide use policies and compliance, which are essential for the banking industry
• By looking to adopt the video functionality of Cisco's IP phones, HSBC will continue to integrate video as a key method of staying close to its clients and addressing needs in a much more personal manner.
• As a complement to Cisco's IP phones, HSBC has also used other Cisco collaboration technologies, including:
• Cisco TelePresence^TM: A high-definition video collaboration solution offering face-to-face, immersive experiences is available at the bank's London, Paris, Dusseldorf, Chicago, Vancouver, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Mexico City, New York, Dubai and Sheffield locations. Cisco TelePresence provides HSBC with all the benefits of in-person meetings, while minimizing travel costs by allowing employees to connect and collaborate despite being great miles away.
• WebEx® Meeting Center: An online collaboration tool that enables live meetings between participants across HSBC locations. Cisco WebEx accelerates consensus, ideas, and product development, and keeps all HSBC employees within instant reach of easy communications that optimize productivity.

Tags / Keywords:

Cisco, IP phones, IP communications, Unified Communications, voice communications, collaboration, Cisco services, video, video conferencing, TelePresence, WebEx, HSBC

Supporting Resources:

• Keep up with Cisco's news by visiting the company's Platform Blog.
• For more information about Cisco's collaboration news and activities visit the Collaboration Blog or follow us via Twitter @CiscoCollab.
• Cisco Voice and Unified Communications
• Cisco Collaboration and Communication
• Cisco TelePresence
• Cisco WebEx

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Video

• How Cisco Business-ified the Phone

About Cisco Collaboration

From award-winning IP communications to mobility, customer care, Web conferencing, messaging, enterprise social software, and interoperable telepresence experiences, Cisco brings together integrated network-based collaboration solutions based on open standards. These solutions, as well as services from Cisco and our partners, are designed to help promote business growth, innovation, and productivity. They also designed to help accelerate team performance, protect investments, and simplify the process of finding the right people and information.