VoiceCon reporter's notebook: Dallas Cowboys on IP phones

How 'bout them IP phones?

IP telephony doesn't win football games for the Dallas Cowboys. But having integrated IP applications and voice does let the organization's coaches, staff and employees be more organized and share information quickly, said Pete Walsh, Head of Technology, Dallas Cowboys, speaking at the VoiceCon show this week.

The Cowboys, in their "third season" with a 3Com-based IP telephony network, use a mix of mobile IP devices such as smartphones and PDAs that let the team's staff do more than just talk to each other while out on the road.

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How 'bout them IP phones?

IP telephony doesn't win football games for the Dallas Cowboys. But having integrated IP applications and voice does let the organization's coaches, staff and employees be more organized and share information quickly, said Pete Walsh, Head of Technology, Dallas Cowboys, speaking at the VoiceCon show this week.

The Cowboys, in their "third season" with a 3Com-based IP telephony network, use a mix of mobile IP devices such as smartphones and PDAs that let the team's staff do more than just talk to each other while out on the road.

"The interesting thing for us is developing the applications to go on those PDAs," Walsh said. One example is an application that allows scouts out in the field to blend data, voice and images. "Scouts can take a picture of a running back at the [NFL scouting] combine, have all of his data come up right there on the screen, and be able to download it back to an application" at team headquarters, while discussing the prospect over the phone.

The technology is a hit at the highest levels of the organization. "Who would of thought that [head] coach [Bill] Parcells is a closet IT geek," said Walsh. "He's got a PDA, a Palm Pilot and computers all over the place."

IP telephony helps Allstate handle good and bad times

Allstate Insurance CIO Catherine Brune speaking at VoiceCon this week said the insurance company uses IP telephony to extend call center capabilities to employees who may usually work in other roles. The idea is that all employees can help when call centers become overwhelmed, or when PSTN service to certain centers is interrupted: both of these were cases recently during hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

"When I became CIO, there's something I'm going to fix," in Allstate's call centers, Brune says. "And that was, when disaster strikes, to have all of our employees, no matter where they sit in the company to help us with those calls ... This was something that is only possible with IP telephony."

Allstate, an Avaya shop, uses VoIP transport among call centers in the U.S. and offshore to reroute calls among sites. IP telephony also lets office workers with IP phones or softphones on PCS, who are located in non-call center facilities, tap into the automatic call distributors (ACD) in the call centers and handle customers.

AT&T looks to open source telephony

AT&T says it is looking more at open-source as an important technology for delivering business VoIP services.

Open source PBXs in particular are of great interest to the carrier, said Eric Shepcaro, vice president of business strategy and development for AT&T. In an interview at VoiceCon, he said that technology such as Digium's Asterisk-based IP PBX could help AT&T by letting the services AT&T delivers interact more tightly with the customer-premise-based call server. Having access to source code could let AT&T deliver applications over its IP network more smoothly, Shepcaro says.

"It's not that it's a challenge to provider services to proprietary" IP PBX systems, such as Avaya and Cisco, which AT&T can interface with, he says. "With open source, you can play with that source code and deploy new features more quickly."