Irish call centres could get a chance to make a significant - and perhaps life-saving - move up the "value chain" if they switched to using internet protocol (IP) telephony rather than regular phone lines, says Mr Barry O'Sullivan, Cisco's newly appointed global head of its voice over IP (VoIP) division, writes Karlin Lillington
The call centre business - which was central to the Republic's gradual move in the 1980s and 1990s to become a technology industry destination - is regularly cited as an Irish sector under threat from cheap outsourcing destinations such as India.
VoIP transmits voice communications as packets of digitised voice data over intranets, extranets and the internet. This enables the voice network to be managed more simply from a single central data centre as another network service and significantly lowers the costs of calls, which no longer need to use telecommunication providers' voice networks.
Voice functions can also be merged with internet functions such as video, and a phone number can move with an individual to any digital phone device or computer anywhere in the world, and is no longer tied to a particular handset.
"Any call from any customer anywhere can be paired with any agent anywhere," says Mr O'Sullivan, who formerly was chief of Nortel Networks Ireland.
He relishes his new job in an area of telephony that he believes is at the forefront of innovation in the telecoms market - and which is becoming a high-growth market for Cisco.
"To be in a cool, sexy, cutting-edge part of the company was really attractive," he says.
He left Ireland to work in the US for Nortel - his employer for 18 years, becoming vice-president, contact centre business - before moving to Cisco two years ago. He took up his new Cisco post two months ago and is in the midst of a move to Silicon Valley.
He liked the idea of working in VoIP, a new and rapidly expanding area in Cisco, as opposed to enterprise voice networks at Nortel, "which had become the boring cash cow".
He argues that not only can IP bring cost advantages to Irish call centres but, as a global VoIP network for a centre, can be managed from one location. He suggests the Republic could become a centre for the higher-value jobs of managing a company's worldwide call centre operation. Call centres make up some 2,000 of Cisco's 14,500 VoIP customers.
Mr O'Sullivan says VoIP is only now really beginning to make its mark.
It took Cisco three years to sell its first one million specially adapted VoIP handsets, and only a single year to sell the second million. "We'll sell half a million in one quarter now," he says.
One million of those have gone into Europe. "The adoption of the technology is actually at pace with the US."
The handsets come with a screen that can display changing information - data, stock ticker tapes, images - which has made VoIP popular in financial services with share traders and at the high end of the hotel industry, where business visitors like being able to manage voice and email from a single handset.
Other sectors that are showing interest in moving to VoIP are the governments, where management has found it attractive and cost-effective to manage the telecommunication network for large numbers of employees centrally, and education, where universities place VoIP phones in student dormitories as well as around campuses.
He cites cost savings case studies as one reason why organisations are looking more closely at a technology that, even four years ago, drew many criticisms regarding poor line quality and uncertainty over standards - issues that have gradually been addressed.
One US bank using 10,000 VoIP handsets has achieved $5 million (€4 million) savings in one year, he says.
He also recalls how one Manhattan company was able to contact all employees and tell them to go home on September 11th, 2001, because the VoIP handsets worked when the phone networks had gone down.
"However, it's not really the costs savings but what you can do more of with VoIP," he says.
He points to innovative use of VoIP handset networks by the Crown Plaza Hotel near Dublin Airport, which is one of only two hotels that Cisco uses as a showcase for VoIP.
For example, the Crowne Plaza uses the handsets for staff as well as hotel guests, enabling the maids to update easily a database to let desk staff know a room is clean and ready for occupancy.
Guests can also choose digital films from the TV, send email from the handsets and use video-conferencing systems that mesh with the handsets.
Cisco regularly brings in clients to view the hotel's set-up, Mr O'Sullivan says.
One of the two areas that he thinks hold special promise is "presence" - the ability for others to know you are available and online, similar to the way in which instant messaging works on a PC.
Cisco is working on one-click methods of connecting to people on your VoIP buddy list, enabling you to ring them immediately when they are available.
Mobility and wireless is the other area - the intermeshing of mobile devices with either telephony networks such as 3G or GSM, and wireless internet networks. Studies show that a large number of corporate mobile calls are actually made within the company building, at much higher cost than a landline or VoIP call. Soon, devices should be able to switch seamlessly between a mobile and wireless network - whichever is available, he says.
