Cisco Brings Enterprise Telephony into the Internet Age with IP-Enabled Voice Features and Services.

Business Editors & High Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 11, 2000

Cisco Delivers Enterprise IP Telephony Solutions With New

E-Services Software Engine and a Range of Intelligent

Productivity-Enhancing Applications

Delivering on its vision for end-to-end converged solutions, Cisco Systems, Inc., (Nasdaq:CSCO) today announced that it is providing advanced software capabilities to its Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data (AVVID). These IP-based communications solutions enable a whole new suite of capabilities and services that will enhance employee productivity, lower the total cost of ownership and provide greater customer care.

This announcement further delivers on Cisco's IP telephony vision within AVVID by significantly enhancing the usability, customization capabilities, and ability to integrate the power of voice communications into today's advanced e-commerce environments. The new solutions being announced today include the Cisco e-services application engine, enhanced display services on the Cisco IP phone 7960, Cisco IP SoftPhone, Cisco WebAttendant, Cisco Auto Attendant, Cisco IP IVR, Cisco uOne 5.0 E, and the Cisco IP Contact Center solution.

"The market for converged solutions is rapidly gaining momentum with infrastructures being put in place that will support the next generation of applications," said David Passmore, director of research at The Burton Group. "By going beyond simply strapping legacy systems onto an IP network Cisco is providing the market with a set of tools and solutions that will ultimately bring the scalability, ease of use, ubiquity and power of the Internet to the voice world."

Internet Flexibility and Scalability for Enterprise Voice Solutions

As businesses continue to transition their separate data, voice and video network infrastructures to an e-commerce enabled converged solution, IT professionals are always looking to maximize the potential of the Internet-based model. Because the Internet is inherently flexible and scalable, many of today's enterprises are migrating to this distributed model. One of the last areas for the Internet to affect is telephony, since it has traditionally been a closed and proprietary environment.

To begin to address these issues, Cisco has announced and continues to deliver on its Enterprise convergence strategy (Cisco AVVID) with a wide range of converged solutions brought to market over the past 12 months. The remaining area to address is the enablement of converged software solutions.

In order to provide customers with the tools and basic components necessary to maximize their infrastructures, Cisco is announcing its e-services application engine. This flexible suite of Java-based application tools enables end customers, partners and developers to leverage the ubiquity of IP for specialized features in telephony, directory access, web access and database access. In the future, additional tools like advanced queuing, VXML services and linkages into Notification Servers will be made available.

In addition to the new e-services application engine, Cisco is also announcing Cisco uOne 5.0E voice messaging solution that sets the foundation for true unified communications in the Enterprise. Cisco uOne 5.0 E can now scale along with Cisco CallManager and utilizes an embedded message store and directory technology to allow users to seamlessly dial by name, lists, distribution groups, etc.

Another product that Cisco is rolling out is a completely IP-based Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solution. This software can be located anywhere on the IP network and can be shared with other applications. The Cisco IP IVR is easy to configure and uses a web-based interface for "drag and drop" capabilities.

Personal Productivity

Because the Cisco IP phones are intelligent IP devices hooked into an intelligent infrastructure, customers are now able to use them with new display-based applications. In conjunction with CallManager 3.0, the Cisco IP phones can be tied directly into a company's LDAP directory for such features as spell by name, personalized directories and user-specified calling groups.

Additional enhancements include activation of the services button where users can pull pre-determined information directly from any website around the globe for up-to-the-minute information and services. Because AVVID's software solutions use open industry standards, partners and developers are now empowered to develop customized applications that will continue to increase productivity and usability of the system.

To extend these features beyond the physical phone itself and to provide a closer link between the IP phone and the PC, Cisco is also announcing the Cisco IP SoftPhone. The Cisco IP SoftPhone takes advantage of the usability of a PC to control your hardware-based IP telephone. In addition, it can also function as a standalone, software IP phone when traveling away from the office. Its intuitive user interface and context-sensitive controls replace the non-intuitive buttons and archaic keystroke combinations of legacy phones. The Cisco IP SoftPhone also enables advanced multimedia collaboration tools to be right at the user's fingertips.

Greater Mobility and Enhanced Customer Care through Convergence

Some of the greatest advantages of deploying a converged solution are the increased mobility (and the ease in which that mobility is enabled) and enhancing customer care. To accomplish this, Cisco is announcing three new IP-enabled communications solutions: the Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC), the Cisco Auto-Attendant and the Cisco Web Attendant.

The Cisco IPCC is a standards-based solution that can be implemented in a single-site environment or a multi-site enterprise. The Cisco IPCC combines Cisco IP telephony with contact center solutions to deliver an integrated suite of proven products that enables agents using Cisco IP phones or SoftPhones to receive calls originated from traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM) networks as well as voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls. Cisco IPCC is based on the Cisco Intelligent Contact Management software (Cisco ICM) which is widely deployed in traditional Call Centers supporting a wide variety of disparate legacy platforms and networks. Cisco IPCC provides a smooth migration path to IP-based customer contact solutions while taking full advantage of previous technology investments.

Specific capabilities include intelligent call routing, automatic call distribution (ACD) functionality, network-to-desktop computer telephony integration (CTI) and consolidated reporting. A significant benefit of the Cisco IPCC is that now businesses can easily extend the boundaries of the contact center enterprise utilizing IP to include branch offices, at-home agents, and knowledge workers.

To further enhance AVVID's mobility features, Cisco is also announcing the Cisco Auto Attendant and the Cisco WebAttendant. The Cisco Auto Attendant application enables customers to set up a system whereby callers can dial into an enterprise and have their call intelligently routed without the need to speak to a live attendant. This frees up corporate worker's time and allows the calls to be transferred to knowledge workers wherever they happen to be connected.

The Cisco WebAttendant is designed to more efficiently automate both the user operations and the administrative operations of a manual attendant function. The WebAttendant uses a Web-based graphical user interface as the primary means of call handling and line-state monitoring. Because this application solution is based on IP, any user logged into the network can participate in the handling of calls through the Cisco WebAttendant.

The additional benefits of these solutions are a heightened sense of customer satisfaction and in many cases, a more reliably dispatched call. For the future, customers will be able to add speech recognition to converged IP solutions by adding the appropriate servers and software on the network. This way, a wide range of next generation IP applications can utilize the power of speech recognition for increased efficiency and customer care.

Complete End-to-End Solutions and Support

Cisco AVVID is an end-to-end Enterprise architecture that not only applies to IP telephony, but to video and data as well. As video continues to become more and more prominent on the network, IT professionals must deploy networks that are intelligent enough to handle the various requirements in a converged architecture.

Cisco currently offers two families of network video products--Cisco IP/TV and Cisco IP/VC. These cost-effective and high-quality offerings support video broadcasting, video on demand, videoconferencing and a range of video management functions, while enabling a broad spectrum of business applications that include training, corporate communications, collaborative meetings, and distance learning. For the latest enhancements to Cisco IP/VC, please see http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/146/pressroom/2000/jul00/ent_072400.htm.

Of course, to design, implement and maintain a converged network, no one solution provider can do it alone. To that end, Cisco continues to partner with and certify 3rd party vendors to develop additional applications and provide value-added services for converged networks. In addition Cisco AVVID (Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data) Service and Support offerings ensures customer success with a complete range of services required for the creation and ongoing health and performance of integrated networks. Cisco AVVID also provides support for an array of customer-contact applications with an open platform model. The Cisco AVVID Application Support services integrate Cisco, partner, and customer competencies to create collaborative support solutions. Together, these offerings improve your clients' customer-contact management through accelerated, converged network application deployment and enhanced network availability.

Pricing, Availability and Further Information

The e-services applications engine and the other new voice software capabilities will be available beginning in Q4 CY2000. The Cisco IP Softphone is priced at $150 per user. The Cisco WebAttendant and Cisco AutoAttendant are included with Cisco's CallManager on the MCS 7835. The price for Cisco uOne 5.0E will range from $100 to $200 per port depending on configuration. The price for a Cisco IP Contact Center solution is dependent on configuration. Pricing for the e-services applications engine and the Cisco IP IVR will be based on which tools and configuration option customers require. For more information on Cisco AVVID please see http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/largeent/avvid/.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO) is the world-wide leader in networking for the Internet. News and information are available at http://www.cisco.com.

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