Both Cisco's Unity and Interactive Intelligence's Communité support SIP, and most other vendors we talked to said they'd add SIP support to their products this year. This will let these products work with any SIP-enabled PBX, such as Zultys' MX1200. Without a new SIP PBX, these UM products require a SIP-enabled proxy server and a gateway to the PSTN to enable SIP phones on the desktop (see diagram, below). Communité can work with its Interactive Center Platform as the SIP gateway. The Interactive Center can also support Communité on the same platform but it is not as feature-rich as the stand-alone version. Cisco would leverage its AS5300 Access Server or a 2600 or 3600 series router as the SIP gateway. Either of these solutions can integrate an IP PBX, though Cisco is limited to Call Manager.
SIP provides more options for telephone sets as well. Rather than taking the default phone set supplied by a vendor, any SIP-supported phone will do. In addition, enterprises can upgrade their workstations to Microsoft Windows XP. Its native support for SIP enables a fully functional softphone through Messenger--something to think about if considering Unity, which does not include a softphone. Communité provides its own SIP softphone with the Interaction Client.
We dispatched an RFP seeking an IP-enabled unified-messaging system that supports IP PBXs and can carry both voice and data, taking full advantage of our fictional law-research firm's substantial investment in its IP infrastructure.
The responses to our questionnaire are below in PDF format:
Avaya responded to our RFP, but its Unified Messenger did not meet a threshold requirement to support SIP and, therefore, was not included in the competitive review. If it were, Unified Messenger for Microsoft Exchange (5.5 or 2000) and for Lotus Notes would have been a competitive bid.
In the RFP, Unified Messenger was poised as a single-vendor VoIP solution that teamed with Avaya's S8300 Media Server, G700 Media Gateway and Model 4620 IP phones. But Avaya also offers Unified Messenger as a "best of breed" UM solution to work with all major IP PBX suppliers--including Ericsson, NEC, Nortel Networks and Siemens--supporting both AMIS (Audio Messaging Interchange Specification) and VPIM (Voice Profile for Internet Mail) for legacy voicemail.
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