2/14/2005 -- The deal Cisco Systems Inc. announced last week with financial services giant Merrill Lynch was a coup of sorts: After all, ML announced plans to deploy a Cisco-based voice-over-IP (VoIP) communications system to support 14,000 financial advisors in approximately 600 Merrill Lynch offices nationwide.

“The Cisco IP telephony solution is a key component of the best-in-class technology platform we are deploying in our branch offices,” said John Killeen, chief technology officer of the Merrill Lynch Global Private Client Group, in a release. “The integration of telephone and workstation represents a significant productivity enhancement for our Financial Advisors and their clients.”

The rub, of course, is that Cisco’s coup wasn’t exactly undisputed. In fact, Merrill Lynch notched an agreement with one of its competitors, Avaya Inc., to deploy Avaya’s Communication Manager IP telephony solutions to more than 10,000 employees at Merrill Lynch campuses in Sydney, Sao Paulo and several locations in the United States, including Merrill Lynch's world headquarters in New York City.

The upshot, then, is that Cisco’s VoIP offering is a branch office-only play—in Merrill Lynch's technology infrastructure, that is.

Nevertheless, Cisco officials sought to put as pretty a face as possible on what must have been something of a bittersweet win for a company that—at one time, anyway—was the premier supplier of VoIP solutions at Merrill Lynch.

“We will build a 'front-office' solution for Merrill Lynch that will be used by Financial Advisors for day-to-day interactions with their clients,” said Charles Giancarlo, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Cisco, in a statement. “This strategic deployment will provide Merrill Lynch with productivity benefits and cost savings, demonstrating the strong value proposition of Cisco's IP telephony business solutions.” -Stephen Swoyer