Feature Story

January 15, 2002

By Amy Hornick, News@Cisco

Continuing its mission to arm customers with the full power of a converged network, Cisco Systems has announced the availability of Cisco Unity 3.1, the latest release of its scalable, enterprise-class unified messaging (UM) software solution.

Cisco Unity is a powerful communications server that provides advanced, convergence-based services-such as voicemail and unified messaging-and integrates them with common desktop applications. According to IDC, the number of unified messaging user mailboxes will boom over next few years, going from 3.1 million mailboxes installed this year to 21.7 million mailboxes by 2005.

With Cisco Unity, employees are able to listen to e-mail over the telephone, check voice messages from the Internet, and (when integrated with a supported third-party fax server) forward faxes wherever they may be. Unified messaging gives them the power to manage their communications quickly and conveniently, so ultimately they have more time to manage their work and respond more quickly to customers.

As an integral part of the Cisco AVVID (Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data) IP telephony solutions portfolio, Cisco Unity 3.1 complements the full range of Cisco's IP-based voice solutions - including CallManager, Personal Assistant, and the Cisco IP Contact Center - by providing advanced capabilities that unify data and voice. For example, Cisco's Personal Assistant brings speech recognition access to Cisco Unity voicemail, as well as providing "find me, follow me" capabilities through personalized call rules.

Cisco Unity is designed for an IP environment. With IP, it's less expensive to deploy a comprehensive communications solution because a single network is used for both voice and data. Cisco Unity supports both Cisco CallManager and leading legacy telephone systems-even simultaneously -to help companies transition to IP telephony at their own pace and protect their investment in existing infrastructure.

As an application that enables end-users to harness the power of a converged voice and data network, Cisco Unity 3.1 also provides a solid foundation for rolling out other convergence-based services to further help them take control of their communications environment by maximizing organizational productivity and enhancing responsiveness to customers. Cisco Unity's server architecture is truly unified with an organizations data network, minimizing installation, administration, and maintenance costs. Built on a platform that can scale to meet a company's needs as it grows, Cisco Unity also uses streaming media and an intuitive browser-style system administration interface, making life easier for IT staff and reducing the total cost of ownership.

The latest version, Cisco Unity 3.1, augments the earlier 3.0 version, with enhanced interoperability and flexibility, enterprise-class scalability, increased reliability and security, and a new visual messaging capability for non-Exchange users. Cisco Unity's Visual Messaging Interface (VMI) is a browser-based message access console (supported on Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher) that provides a dedicated voice mail inbox to deliver unified messaging functionality for customers with non-Exchange groupware or mixed e-mail client environments. As an international product with a global customer base, Cisco Unity 3.1 supports multiple languages, including Dutch, four dialects of English (Australian, New Zealand, U.K., and U.S.), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Norwegian, two dialects of Spanish (Colombian and European), and Swedish.

Cisco Unity 3.1 also introduces support for the IBM x232 and x250 hardware platforms, allowing customers greater flexibility when selecting a hardware platform for Unity. The software will continue to let users set up and manage a unified voice and e-mail system by hooking into Microsoft Active Directory in a Windows/Exchange 2000 network, centralizing network and messaging system administration.

Pricing for Cisco Unity 3.1 will be the same as the previous version, starting at U.S. $145/seat. A voicemail-only Cisco Unity 3.1 solution is also available starting at U.S. $70/seat.

Amy Hornick is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.