VoiceCon 2004 Keynote: IP Telephony's in the Enterprise Network

Convergence is actually "an easy business case" and not at all a "career threatening" proposal, said Niraj Patel, Executive VP & CIO, GMAC Commercial Holding Corp., in a keynote presentation on Tuesday at VoiceCon 2004 in Orlando, Florida. Just "don't try it on your old network," he joked... you'll definitely need an MPLS backbone to manage the QoS. GMAC is using a fully meshed MPLS core to reach its 109 offices across the U.S. and worldwide. Already 100% of the company's international voice calls, 20% of its domestic voice calls, and 100% of its corporate video conferences are IP-based. The network operates with four classes of service: video, voice, high priority and low priority. Approximately 500 of the company's 3,500 employees are using IP phones. The rest will be transitioned slowly, as their existing desktop handsets have remaining usefulness. Moving international voice traffic over the existing WAN is saving the company about $163,000 per year and there is an additional savings from the elimination of ISDN video calls. The MPLS connectivity is provided by Masergy, a carrier based in Texas. http://www.convergedigest.com