* Voice over IP is one of the most talked-about technology trends of 2004 and, in contrast to a few years ago when it had its last hype wave, products are available that can actually deliver enterprise class telephony. Although most of the chat in recent months has been about consumer services, with giant telcos like AT&T moving towards mass VoIP offerings alongside pioneers like Vonage and open source alternatives like Skype, in the last two months, attention has swung back to the corporate installation with a string of high profile deals in companies not known for investing in new technology on a whim. Three contracts in particular, signed with Cisco by Bank of America, Ford and Boeing, have instilled new confidence in VoIP, and in Cisco's ability to supply it, after much speculation that the market leader was being eclipsed by its challengers.

FORD MOTOR

Telco SBC Communications is to design, implement and manage an IP telephony system for more than 50,000 employees at Ford Motor's world headquarters and other facilities.

In a collaborative effort, Ford will own the infrastructure and manage its data network while SBC provides phone services as a managed application, said Brian Buffington, executive director of managed services at SBC. The project is SBC's largest ever IP telephony deployment.

Ford is looking to maximize its operating efficiencies by turning to IP telephony at its Dearborn, Michigan main office and 110 other company facilities in south eastern Michigan, according to the carmaker. For example, the technology allows for easily setting up employee phone assignments when they join the company or move. Most of the sites, including the headquarters, will be switched over to about 90% IP phones, some running over Wi-Fi.

The system, to be rolled out at Ford over the next three years, is based on Cisco equipment and will combine separate networks at Ford into one IP-based infrastructure that carries data, voice and video, according to an SBC statement. The telephony system will be based on the SBC PremierServ IP Telephony Advantage platform, using the Cisco IP Communications system and about 50,000 Cisco IP telephones. SBC PremierServ Managed Care engineers will work on-site at Ford facilities, managing the service.

SBC will test the system at a staging center in Memphis, Tennessee, and consultants from Callisma, an SBC company, will work with Ford to integrate the new system with the company's existing infrastructure, the statement said. Ford is already an SBC customer, using the carrier's Centrex centralized call switching service and the SBC GigaMAN Service, a point-to-point Ethernet network, among its facilities in south eastern Michigan. Ford has about 327,000 employees worldwide.

Huge VoIP roll-outs like this one are making the technology far more credible and will reassure CIOs thinking of a converged all-IP strategy. However, success will still depend on significant investment in support and partnerships, such as Ford's with SBC, so cost savings will certainly not be immediately visible.

Cisco's IP telephony platform has come under some fire lately and smaller competitors have been making hay from some defections from the giant, but the Ford deal puts the company back on top of the list of VoIP players.

Telcos and other IP providers will need to polish up their services offerings and ensure they can form true partnerships with large enterprises if they are to take advantage of the opportunities of IP convergence.

BOEING

Boeing is expanding its IP telephony roll-out to its entire enterprise and will standardize on Cisco IP telephony equipment. The deal with Cisco will extend IP telephony to all of Boeing's 150,000 employees in 48 states and 70 countries. It will also standardize on CallManager IP PBX technology, with several pilots running across its US enterprise--around 9,000 IP phones in total.

Boeing has worked with Cisco IP telephony gear since 2001, rolling out the technology in small pockets and a pilot involving about 800 staff to date. Previously, Boeing officials said that scaling problems on the CallManager servers were among some of the issues that held back a wider IP telephony roll-out.

"Recent advances in technology and product innovation have overcome many of the obstacles inhibiting the convergence of Boeing's voice and data networks," said Christopher Kent, vice president of computing and network operations in Boeing's Shared Services Group, in a statement.

Boeing already does extensive IP-based voice trunking over its MPLS-based IP backbone, which supports an array of mixed TDM phone switches from Avaya, Lucent and Nortel, as well as some Cisco CallManager IP PBXs. The Cisco deal will push IP telephony down to most desktops throughout the company. Boeing already uses Cisco switches and routers extensively in its enterprise Lans and corporate-wide wide area network. The company has said it will upgrade much of its current Lan gear to support the Cisco IP telephony technology and install QoS-capable switches at the Lan edge that also provide power over Ethernet.