An Open Approach to Advanced Messaging

In the IT world, we have come to expect a level of system and application interoperability that allows us to flexibly deploy best-in-class hardware and software to solve our business problems. Companies choose servers, networking equipment, and applications independently of one another, knowing they can be deployed with minimal effort.

Yet the world of telephony has always been different. Legacy telephony vendors historically locked customers into buying the PBX, phones, and even applications (like voicemail, call centre tools, or IVR) all from that one vendor. One of the great promises of IP telephony, and the standards around it like SIP, is that you can now separate these elements. You are free to choose the most appropriate PBX for each site, the right endpoints depending on each user’s needs, and the best applications based on their own merits, knowing they can run across your VoIP environment. Some solutions even work with your legacy PBXs as well.

The concepts of shared infrastructure, interfaces and protocols drove much of Cisco’s success in data networking. This is the vision Cisco CallManager brings to the telephony side of operations. By deploying open telephony applications along with CallManager, VoIP teams – with members from both IT and telecom – can transform your telephony architecture from a world of soiled services to one of shared infrastructure and resources. At the same time, you gain the complete flexibility to migrate to VoIP site by site, on your own schedule, all without compromising user capabilities.

This paper highlights an open approach to IP telephony applications that, running alongside your TDM and IP PBXs, has the power to change how your business communicates. It is these “next-generation” open applications, and not the phones or the PBX, that will deliver the business value that converged networks promise. New functionality under the umbrella of unified communications allows users to work with voice messages as easily as email and to work remotely as easily as locally. Speech interfaces can save time and mask complexity. As a perfect complement to your VoIP rollout, these new end-user capabilities make your organisation more productive, more responsive, and ultimately more competitive.