BEARINGPOINT SELECTS METREOS FOR VOIP APPLICATION DEVELOPMENTFirst Applications Reduce Office Space Lease Costs and
Provide Superior Communications for Mobile Workforce
San Diego, CA - August 29, 2005 - Metreos Corporation, the leader in the emerging communications application environment (CAE) market, today announced at VoiceCon Fall 2005 that BearingPoint has selected Metreos products to enable the rapid development, reliable execution and automated management of its VoIP applications.
BearingPoint's innovative IT group was an early adopter of VoIP technology, and like other thought leaders, BearingPoint has been exploring ways in which it can leverage this new technology for competitive advantage. In addition, BearingPoint often explores and uses new technologies internally to "walk in its customers' shoes" and gain first-hand experience before offering consulting services around these technologies to its global customer base.
After evaluating a number of opportunities, BearingPoint identified the first business process to be transformed using voice and data convergence. BearingPoint's consultants currently use a Web-based application to reserve temporary office space as they travel between various BearingPoint offices and customer locations, but until now there has been no way to know if the consultants actually show up and use the space. As a result, BearingPoint has historically spent an inflated amount of money on real estate lease costs.
Using the Metreos 2400 Enterprise, BearingPoint built its first application to leverage the extension mobility feature of the Cisco CallManager. Now when a consultant arrives at a temporary office, he or she logs into the IP phone at that location. Calls are automatically forwarded to this location, and a database is automatically updated to indicate the space was actually used by the consultant. The data from the reservation system and the data from the IP telephony system can then be reconciled programmatically to understand estimated versus actual space use.
BearingPoint will now be able to lease space based on actual use data rather than inflated estimates, generating significant annual recurring cost savings on lease expenses, and as an added benefit, consultants will be more readily accessible to customers.
"BearingPoint sees IP telephony not just as a new technology, but as a fundamentally new business instrument, with the potential to transform business processes and deliver significant competitive advantage," said Chas White, executive vice president and corporate CTO at BearingPoint. "In order to realize the promise, however, a number of challenges must be overcome, such as the complexity of the wide variety of arcane telephony protocols, sophisticated media processing requirements and other issues unique to converged voice and data applications. We chose Metreos as our communications application environment because it will protect the reliability of IP dial tone, accelerate application development, and provide centralized management of our VoIP applications."
The second application BearingPoint is using is cross-cluster extension mobility. This application enables BearingPoint's mobile workers to retain their personal phone numbers, voice mail, and other features of their base phone in any temporary office space they may occupy, spanning BearingPoint's offices and multiple Cisco IP PBX clusters.
"Metreos is very pleased to welcome BearingPoint as a new customer," said Joel Fontenot, CEO of Metreos. "We look forward to supporting BearingPoint as it takes advantage of many more opportunities for convergence and business process transformation."
About BearingPoint
BearingPoint, Inc. (NYSE: BE) is one of the world's largest management consulting, systems integration and managed services firms serving government agencies, Global 2000 companies, medium-sized businesses and other organizations. We provide business and technology strategy, systems design, architecture, applications implementation, network infrastructure, systems integration and managed services. Our service offerings are designed to help our clients generate revenue, reduce costs and access the information necessary to operate their business on a timely basis. Based in McLean, Va., BearingPoint has been named by Fortune as one of America's Most Admired Companies in the computer and data services sector. For more information, visit the Company's website at www.BearingPoint.com.
About Metreos
Metreos Corporation has delivered the industry's first and only complete communications application environment (CAE), enabling rapid development and automated management of applications that converge voice with enterprise applications and data, streamlining business processes for competitive advantage. Industry recognition for Metreos includes winning Best of Show at the Cisco Innovation Through Convergence Expo among other awards. Founded in 2001, venture capital-backed Metreos is based in Austin, Texas. Learn more at www.metreos.com.