Bank of America Deploys 100,000 Cisco IP Phones

EDS [1] and Bank of America have announced the deployment of 100,000 Cisco [2] IP phones throughout the bank's network infrastructure. The deployment effort has so far spanned more than 4,000 Bank of America retail banking centers, branch, and remote offices and features Cisco UC and network system software and hardware. Cisco says this is the largest enterprise VoIP deployment worldwide.

Bank of America is replacing multiple legacy voice systems with the VoIP/UC rollout and the deployment is one component of a multi-year systems integration and services agreement with EDS. The two companies have been working together since 2003 to consolidate, upgrade, and "transform" the bank's voice and data network infrastructure. EDS features a "converged communications network" for financial services, and can provide IP telephony and unified messaging.

More IP phones will likely be added to the total in the future. Bank of America has more than 6,100 retail banking offices in the United States and serves clients in 175 countries.

For more:
- Read the press release on EDS deploying 100,000 Cisco Unified IP Phones [3] for Bank of America
- HP Buys EDS [4]; does this make HP a bigger VoIP player?  [5]

Related articles:
UC battle begins; Cisco, Microsoft Lead [6], says Infonetics
Enterprise telephony market tops $9.6 billion in 2007, IP phone shipments up [7] 29%