UniCredit Romania Prepares for Rapid Growth with Cisco Unified Communications System

BUCHAREST, Romania, April 4, 2006 - Cisco Systems® today announced that UniCredit Romania, part of UniCredit Group, a leader in banking in Central and Eastern Europe, has deployed, at its new headquarters in Bucharest, a new business voice and data communications system built completely on Cisco® technology.
The system provides centrally-managed, high-availability data and voice services for staff at UniCredit Romania’s headquarters and 50 branch offices throughout the country where the solution supports a mixture of Internet Protocol (IP) and traditional telephony systems.

UniCredit has over 50,000 clients in Romania who access the bank’s products and services through a national network of 50 branches. The performance and resilience of the Cisco networking and unified communications infrastructure is critical to UniCredit’s ability to offer a consistent and high-quality customer experience. Cisco Gold Certified Partner Datanet Sytems SRL implemented the new system in less than two months, allowing headquarters staff at UniCredit to relocate to the new building in January without loss of productivity. The system will also provide a scalable and flexible infrastructure to simplify the integration of communications systems to support the rapid growth of the business.

The Cisco Unified Communications system is designed for centralized configuration and administration, allowing branch offices to be remotely managed. This has resulted in significant savings in cost and resources both during deployment and in operation.

"Our aim is to offer a consistent communications service throughout the organisation, regardless of geographic location" said Stefan Panait, team leader Telecommunication & Security Unicredit Romania. "At the same time we needed to reduce operating costs, centralise administration and increase employee efficiency through the integration of our communications service with other services in the enterprise. After careful analysis of the market, we chose the Cisco Unified Communications system, which successfully fulfils these criteria" concluded Panait.

Gabriel Musat, General Manager of Datanet Systems said: "The implementation of the Unified Communications system for UniCredit within very tight deadlines tested our ability to coordinate and execute the project plan with maximum efficiency. Datanet’s experience and the quality of Cisco technologies helped us meet all our objectives and satisfy the customer’s requirements in this project"

"Cisco has helped many businesses to develop their IT strategies to support rapid growth and maintain a high level of customer service" said Bogdan Constantinescu, country manager, Cisco Systems Romania & Republic of Moldova. "Through our customers’ successes and with Datanet as our partner, we were able to fully demonstrate the advantages of the Cisco Unified Communications system to UniCredit"

UniCredit Romania has deployed a Cisco Unified CallManager system, voice over IP (VoIP) gateways and Cisco Unified IP Phone 7960G and Unified IP Phone 7921G handsets to support all call-processing functions at the headquarters and 50 branch offices. The Cisco network infrastructure is based on Cisco 2800 Series Integrated Services Routers and Cisco Catalyst® switches.

About UniCredit Group

UniCredit Group is one of the most important financial institutions in the world with a market capitalization of Eur 60 billion and over Eur 750 billion total net assets. The Group is main shareholder of UniCredit Romania with 99.94% shares, being present on the Romanian banking market through UniCredit Romania, HVB Bank Romania and Banca Tiriac, financial institutions with joint net assets exceeding Eur 3 billion. For more details on UniCredit Romania and UniCredit Group, please access www.unicredit.ro or www.unicredit.it.

About Datanet Systems

Incorporated in 1998, Datanet Systems offers a full range of products and professional services for data/voice/video communication networks, including planning, design, solution integration, implementation, operation and optimization services. The company is one of the main suppliers of communication technology for most of the banking, financial institutions and telecom operators in Romania.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Cisco news and information are available at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com. Cisco equipment in Europe is supplied by Cisco Systems International BV, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco Systems, Inc.

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