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IP TELEPHONY CASE STUDY
Migrating 40,000 Cisco Employees to IP Telephony
Phased global effort produces cost savings for Cisco and valuable lessons for customers.
In 2000, Cisco Systems® began replacing its traditional PBX systems with Cisco® Unified CallManager
clusters. More than 40,000 employees on campuses worldwide started using Cisco IP phones and Cisco IP SoftPhone
software. The goals of this project were to realize cost savings, simplify the voice communications environment, and
gain insights that would help simplify the IP telephony migration process for Cisco customers.
A cross-functional team, backed by the executive sponsorship of Cisco
Systems CEO John Chambers, planned the migration strategy. This
strategy focused on planning for deployment, operational processes,
change management, and user communications and training. Specific
project teams were created, with members from various company areas,
including voice telephony, LAN and WAN engineering, implementation,
support, and finance.
Business Benefits
• Reduced costs for equipment,
cabling, circuits, and
operations.
•
Improved employee
productivity with new
communications capabilities.
•
Identified key lessons, defined
processes and best practices,
and produced materials to
help customer migrations.
“My goal was for Cisco to be our best
first customer by showing worldwide
leadership in the deployment of
Cisco IP telephony.”
-- John Chambers, CEO
Cisco Systems
Migration implementation activities prepared the Cisco network
infrastructure for converged voice and data traffic. These activities
included assessment of LAN and WAN requirements, quality of service
(QoS) configuration, creation of separate VLANs for voice and data site
surveys, and plans for connecting with voicemail systems.
A special planning focus was on “Day 2” operations and support.
Spe