Cisco and Italtel join forces to help service providers capitalise on growth in business IP voice services.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) and its strategic alliance partner, Italtel, have announced the introduction of a joint network transformation solution designed to help service providers to migrate their telephone networks to an Internet Protocol (IP) platform on which they can build flexible managed IP voice services for large enterprises and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Italtel-Cisco Business Voice Solution (BVS) provides a carrier-class IP communications platform on which service providers can generate new revenue streams by offering IP voice and video telephony, conferencing, unified messaging and IP call centre services, through a wide range of hosted and managed services models. Synergy Research Group, Inc. has forecast a compound annual growth rate of 40.4% for 2004 to 2008 for the EMEA Enterprise IP Telephony market, creating an EMEA market value of $3.5 billion in 2008(a).

"The pressure to replace dwindling voice and access revenues with higher margin services is focusing all service providers' minds on delivering new managed services and applications, particularly managed IP voice services layered over data networks," said Enrico Deluchi, Managing Director, EMEA Business Development and Marketing, Service Provider Wireline, Cisco Systems. "Today's announcement is a clear demonstration of how our alliance with Italtel is producing innovative solutions which address both revenue generation and operating cost savings. It is designed to give service providers the ability to deliver value-added business voice services and to provide a cost-effective migration strategy to transform legacy telephony networks into a cost-competitive next-generation network."

Antonino D'Angelo, Italtel Chief Technology Officer, added: "Through our close collaboration with Cisco, we have developed a compelling architecture for hosted and managed IP voice services with a standards-compliant next-generation network platform. This solution allows enterprises to obtain competitive advantages through increasing their productivity and giving them new advanced, integrated voice/ video/data services in an ubiquitous way. Cost savings and out-tasking of non core activities are also important factors for choosing the Italtel/Cisco solution."

Telecom Italia is deploying the Italtel-Cisco BVS platform to introduce innovative VoIP solutions to medium and large enterprises.

Italtel-Cisco BVS is the result of close integration of the Italtel Multi-Service Solution (iMSS) platform, that includes the Italtel Softswitch, with Cisco IP communications technologies, incorporating IP telephones, CallManager call-processing systems, Integrated Services Routers, Catalyst switches, VoIP gateways and centralised Operation / Billing services. Through this unified Next Generation Network platform, service providers can deliver business voice services and other new revenue-generating services in conjunction with migration to a classless switching network.

Italtel-Cisco BVS makes it possible for service providers to meet a wide range of customers' needs, from a completely hosted and managed model, to a mix of managed and self-managed services. It also provides a smooth migration path for customers who want to gradually phase out their legacy PBX systems.