VoIP Gains Ground With BofA Deal

EDS (Plano, Texas) will build a converged voice, video and data communications system for Bank of America to improve productivity for the bank's 180,000 employees working at more than 5,800 locations across the country.

Bank of America already outsources its IT infrastructure to EDS under a multiyear, multibillion-dollar contract that calls for the systems integrator to reengineer and manage voice and data services. EDS and networking equipment supplier Cisco Systems will deploy the bank's IP telephony network over the next two to three years.

The new technology will replace more than 360 PBX voice systems. The bank has ordered 180,000 IP telephones from Cisco, which says IP technology will make it easier to provide bank employees with access to integrated data from business applications, develop customized XML-based applications and extend contact center resources to multiple locations.

"The principal driver for this move isn't saving money, but the potential for new applications that the bank can deploy," says Dave Passmore, research director at IT research firm Burton Group.-Paul Travis, InformationWeek

This article originally appeared in InformationWeek, a sibling publication of Bank Systems & Technology.

Paul Travis is Managing Editor of InformationWeek.com. Paul got his start as a newspaper reporter, putting black smudges on dead trees in the 1970s. Eventually he moved into the digital world, covering the telecommunications industry in the 1980s (when Ma Bell was broken up) ... View Full Bio