BT Offers Cisco-based IP Service in America

Updated: January 07, 2011

 Verizon has teamed up with Cisco to offer Unified Communication and Collaboration (UCC) over the cloud to British Telecommunications (BT). BT also plans to take advantage of Cisco by offering its hosted IP communications services in the United States through Cisco's Hosted Unified Communications Services (HUCS) platform, in addition to its own Onevoice UCC portfolio. BT's cloud-based system, launched in the UK in 2009, would be used to bring converged voice, mobile, and data systems to all desktops within a single business.

According to Neil Sutton, the VP of global portfolio at BT Global Services, one of BT's four main lines of business, “BT and Cisco's collaboration...helps businesses reduce capital expenditure, enhance communication and introduce productivity enhancing tools.” The system helps businesses by dramatically reducing upfront investment costs and streamlining internal communications. It's deployment worldwide would also be a substantial advancement in the adoption of unified communications on a global scale.

Robert F. Mason, principal research analyst at Gartner and author of Market Clock for Communications Services, 2010, said that BT's service “offers the opportunity to evaluate functionality and potential productivity benefits of a UC implementation without the upfront investment of an on-premises solution.” Barry O'Sullivan, senior VP of Cisco's Voice Technology Group, said of the deal that Cisco is “delighted BT is expanding its hosted service into new global markets” and that the two companies “share the same vision of providing customers with flexible deployment models that can ultimately help customers reduce costs while enhancing communications across the enterprise.”

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