Merrill Lynch taps Avaya, Cisco for separate VoIP projects

Merrill Lynch this week said it will install IP PBX and phone gear from Avaya and Cisco for separate VoIP rollouts in the financial firm’s headquarters and branch offices, respectively.

The branch office project will put Cisco IP phones in 600 Merrill Lynch retail brokerage branch offices, with a centralized Cisco IP PBX supporting 14,000 financial advisors. Meanwhile, the firm will also install Avaya S8700 IP PBXs in its corporate headquarters in New York, Brazil, Australia and Japan, which support over 10,000 employees total. The Avaya IP PBXs will replace older Definity PBXs and support a mix of digital and IP phones as well as softphone clients.

"Merrill Lynch is not commenting on the details of either project."

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Merrill Lynch this week said it will install IP PBX and phone gear from Avaya and Cisco for separate VoIP rollouts in the financial firm’s headquarters and branch offices, respectively.

The branch office project will put Cisco IP phones in 600 Merrill Lynch retail brokerage branch offices, with a centralized Cisco IP PBX supporting 14,000 financial advisors. Meanwhile, the firm will also install Avaya S8700 IP PBXs in its corporate headquarters in New York, Brazil, Australia and Japan, which support over 10,000 employees total. The Avaya IP PBXs will replace older Definity PBXs and support a mix of digital and IP phones as well as softphone clients.

"Merrill Lynch is not commenting on the details of either project."

Tapping Cisco for the large branch office VoIP project comes after a much-publicized pullout of Cisco IP telephony gear in the vendor’s corporate offices in Hopewell, N.J., and Tokyo. The company said it wanted to move towards a hybrid IP/TDM phone system, and chose to install Avaya equipment, which can support both traditional digital and IP phone sets. Merrill Lynch was an Avaya customer before deploying the Cisco VoIP gear.

“This is a different part of their environment,” says Charlie Giancarlo, Cisco’s CTO, regarding Merrill Lynch's new project with Cisco. “The past situation was regarding one of their corporate office sites. This deal involvers 600 branch offices.”

“Clearly, this is going to take a lot of integration,” says Lou D’Ambrosio, group vice president of global sales at Avaya. Merrill Lynch is using a mix of Cisco and Avaya professional services for installation, integration and support, as well as third-party systems integration firms for the projects.