Cisco announced the today the worldwide news agency called Reuters deployed Thailand’s Internet Protocol (IP) telephony site in Thailand with 700 Cisco IP Phone 7960Gs, Cisco IP Phone 7940Gs and Cisco Wireless IP Phone 7920s.
With systems integration managed by Cisco strategic alliance partner HP, Reuters Thailand is also the first Reuters office in Asia to replace its legacy private branch access (PBX) telephony system with an IP telephony solution that sits on an integrated data, voice, and video IP network.
“The Cisco IP communications solution has been running for several months now and the system is working smoothly. I am very satisfied with the solution and the support provided by HP and Cisco. Our staff can now work more efficiently in terms of leaving and accessing their messages from voice mail or e-mail,” said Mr. Chalempol Tuchinda, technical director, Reuters Thailand.
“Reuters has a plan to implement this phone system across all Reuters offices, as this will enable significant cost savings in long-distance calls since the calls will be transmitted over the IP network. Another feature that will help us reduce costs when our staff go abroad for training or for work is the single number functionality. They can contact another Reuters office at lower cost because they need to use only one number all over the world, be it America or London,” he added.
This promises to be a nice contract for Cisco. Reuters is a respected news agency with reporting from every corner of the world and can only continue to grow as instant news continues to proliferate every aspect of our existence and even more so around the world.
In 2001, Reuters has invested 46 million Thai baht (US$1.18 million) to create a state-of-the-art facility now employing about 554 staff including software development, testing and project management professionals in Thailand. Reuters Software (Thailand) Ltd. (RSTL) oversees development and support responsibility for real-time financial applications for market data display and analysis, order routing, transaction processing, news content creation and data distribution.
Since its opening, RSTL has enabled Reuters to improve customer service and reduce costs by consolidating development activities that previously took place in multiple locations. In 2004, RSTL was formally certified at Level 5 of the Software Engineering Institute’s CMMI model for Software Process Improvement (SPI). RSTL is the 42nd organisation globally, the first in Southeast Asia and the first in Thailand to achieve CMMI Level 5 certification.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.