Cisco

Cisco Systems is a global leader in the design and manufacture of IP-based networking solutions, operating in more than 165 countries through 470 offices. Inbound calls to Cisco were delivered to their European headquarters in multiple locations – first to Bedfont Lakes and then to a principle office in Reading, carried over the Cisco WAN.

This allowed Cisco people at Reading to enjoy the same number range as their colleagues at Bedford Lakes, supporting the optimised use of available lines, flexible working and simplified number management.

However, there were a number of business resilience concerns. In the event that the local BT exchange serving their headquarters suffered a major outage or failure, calls would stop flowing to one site, similarly impacting the other and resulting in both offices losing voice communications.

Cisco deployed Smartnumbers to ensure that in the event of a failure, calls will continue to flow, with flexible number management and call redirection.

With Smartnumbers, when network failures are detected, calls are automatically redirected to alternative phone numbers. Calls can also be manually diverted in the event of planned or unforeseen circumstances, and the service works in harmony with the existing Cisco WAN system.

For instance, in the event of any problem with the delivery of calls from the local exchange to Bedfont Lakes, calls will be automatically and instantaneously re-routed by Smartnumbers via the Cisco voice gateway at Reading and delivered to Bedfont Lakes over the Cisco WAN.

With Smartnumbers, Cisco have a dependable business continuity solution that prevents business disruption, which has had the added benefit of cost reduction.

“Using Smartnumbers is much more cost effective than dual-parenting ISDN services and it provides us with far greater network resilience. It’s simply a much more flexible and elegant solution” explains Guy Wychmans, Category Supply Manager, Cisco.

Because Smartnumbers allows calls to be redirected to any fixed or mobile device, people can work from anywhere, even in the event of bad weather or worse, without the need to maintain a recovery site.

Aside from business continuity and risk avoidance, Smartnumbers allows the seamless delivery of out-of-area exchange line numbers, making it feasible for all Cisco UK employees to be included in the same number range irrespective of their location.

Additionally, as Smartnumbers is cloud-based it enables modifications to be made to internal infrastructure without impacting voice services. For example, Cisco runs IP telephony end-to-end, but for many organisations where that’s not the case Smartnumbers has the potential to make the transition to SIP trunks easier and safer.