Lucent Technologies Monday announced the availability of Phase Two of DEFINITY IP Solutions, bringing customers Voice over IP to the desktop via Lucent's industry-leading DEFINITY business communications servers, and further extending Lucent's support for business applications over packet networks.
Together with Lucent's world-class and market-leading messaging, mobility and customer relationship management (CRM) applications, Lucent's robust IP capabilities provide a full set of communication options to help businesses improve efficiency and lower costs while evolving to meet the demands of e-business. DEFINITY IP Solutions joins a number of products Lucent has developed to help businesses enhance their networks to take advantage of IP applications, including IP Exchange Systems, Intuity Voice Messaging, Cajun Campus LAN Solutions, CentreVu Internet Solutions and CentreVu IP Agent.
This latest addition to the DEFINITY portfolio reinforces the company's commitment to communication choices, providing enterprises with the flexibility of moving voice, video and data traffic over the Internet, intranets, extranets, public-switched networks and ATM.
DEFINITY IP Solutions is available as an easy upgrade for existing systems and is available for all new DEFINITY Enterprise Communications Server (ECS) and DEFINITY ProLogix Solutions servers. Lucent is demonstrating DEFINITY IP Solutions across its DEFINITY product portfolio here at VoiceCon2000.
"This is about real-world solutions with intelligent network migration and options to support e-business, while continuing to give enterprises the most reliable communications in the industry," said Angie McGuire, president, Lucent's Enterprise Communications Systems. "Lucent Technologies is delivering on its promise to continually evolve its DEFINITY servers to support new technologies, and through its Quality of Service capability, making VoIP real for customers for whom reliability is critical." More than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies have DEFINITY servers in their networks.
Hundreds of customers have installed Phase One of DEFINITY IP Solutions -- its IP trunking capability -- in production packet networks, and JetBlue Airways and University of Maryland, College Park are now among a growing number of enterprises benefiting from the packet network support of application-rich solutions -- including customer reservations and IP voice messaging -- provided by DEFINITY IP Solutions at the desktop. In addition, DEFINITY IP Solutions leverages enterprises' investments in existing voice and data networks, business applications, people resources and training, while bringing the DEFINITY servers' unparalleled reliability, scalability and robust features and applications to their packet networks.
New York-based JetBlue Airways, a start-up airline specializing in low fares, is the first company to implement Lucent's CentreVu IP Agent, a CRM software solution enabled by DEFINITY IP Solutions. CentreVu IP Agent helps enterprises take full advantage of their data networks by delivering call signaling and phone features to an agent's PC through an IP connection. Now, agents working at home can provide the same high level of customer care that they can in a traditional call center environment with lower cost of ownership.
"We felt that, by starting out with a fresh approach to communications technology, we had a chance to set new standards for the airline industry," said Frankie Littleford, JetBlue's director of reservations. "Our president worked for another airline that used remote call center agents, and he knew they were highly productive and happier employees. Their job satisfaction translates to our customer relationships. Advanced technology is helping to make our new approach to serving customers happen."
University of Maryland, College Park, a leader in the development and application of information technology, has been using DEFINITY IP Solutions for the past eight months. After an easy software upgrade to the university's existing DEFINITY ECS and DEFINITY ProLogix Solutions servers, staff members in six of the university's buildings have been sending their voice conversations and voice mail across University of Maryland's data network.
"The DEFINITY IP phones are functioning well," said Mark Katsouros, the university's telecommunications automation specialist. "They have good sound quality, are easy to use, and the administration of moves, adds and changes is as simple as it has always been."
Katsouros believes the cost savings associated with DEFINITY IP Solutions is a major advantage. In the near future, he expects to use the technology to provide voice and data service to a new building. As a result, he'll save money because he won't have to run both copper cables for voice and ethernet for data connections to the new building.
"Voice as data will make it possible for everyone to deal with one infrastructure rather than two," said Katsouros. "The bottom line is money." Product Description
