IBM moving workforce to IP voice

LAS VEGAS - IBM, creator of the Token Ring LAN, is in the midst of ripping out that infrastructure and replacing it with Ethernet, not just for speed and manageability, but also because it can support IP telephony.

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LAS VEGAS - IBM, creator of the Token Ring LAN, is in the midst of ripping out that infrastructure and replacing it with Ethernet, not just for speed and manageability, but also because it can support IP telephony.

That's key, because IBM has made the decision to go with IP telephony, embarking on one of the world's largest and most complex voice-over-IP (VoIP) projects.

"I don't think we've ever seen a commercial account to which we've proposed VoIP that has had the breadth and complexity of what we are chasing," says Yves Lozach, IBM's director of global sales support, networking services.

IBM uses hundreds of Siemens PBXs in its facilities in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and has more than 200,000 handsets in the U.S.

The value of merging the giant corporation's voice and data networks outweighs the cost of scrapping what could be one of the largest token-ring installations left in the world, an IBM spokesman told a group of analysts last week at a Siemens conference in Las Vegas called "IP PBX - A new way to communicate."

"We expect to secure significant cost savings from convergence initiatives - and superior application enablement as well," said Johnny Barnes, IBM vice president of global IT infrastructure, at a session on the company's new 2,500-employee software development plant in Toronto.

Goals just for the 2,700-phone, 9,000-desktop Toronto project include shifting to Fast and Gigabit Ethernet, switching from traditional PBXs to IP call processing and embracing wireless LANs.

Barnes told conference attendees that the project is so massive that it required approval of the IBM board, says Paul Strauss, an analyst with IDC who attended. "It is $100 million if not hundreds of millions of dollars," Strauss says.

The Toronto project was installed in less than eight months using a team consisting of staff from IBM Global Services, IBM Global Voice Infrastructure and Cisco. IBM's own messaging management platform, Message Center, is integrated into the network to provide voice mail and unified messaging. At other sites, IBM also has used Avaya and Siemens IP phone gear.