Lotus Sametime to Embrace "Unified Telephony"
Elements of Siemens OpenScape will phone-enable IBM's unified communications suite.
Unified communications (UC) is certainly a hot topic these daysbut there's little consensus about what, exactly, comprises it. In most views, voiceand voicemailis central to a scheme that integrates all the major modes of business communications.
IBM Corp. recently announced plans to bring its UC offering, Lotus Sametime, into congruence with that vision with the advent of Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony, a new offering that will integrate telephone communicationsboth hardware and software-based calling that works with any IP- or TDM-based PBXand phone management into "the business applications people use most."
With Unified Telephony, sophisticated call management will be available to users. Incoming calls will generate an alert on the user's desktop, giving him/her a number of options for routing or handling them. Integration with calendar functions, for example, allows users to set up call-handling rules, where, say, any call that comes in when a meeting is scheduled on the user's calendar is automatically routed to voicemail.
Furthermore, Sametime's 'presence' functionality (status and availability information) will be extended to include comprehensive phone presence. Click-to-call and click-to-conference capability join the features list as well, along with "one-number" calling (also known as "find me/follow me"), where the system automatically routes calls to the phone where a user is available.
The core of Unified Telephonyconnectivity to multi-vendor PBXs, call control at the desktop, and aggregated telephony presenceis provided through the integration of key components of Siemens' UC offering, OpenScape. And the core design foundation of OpenScapeits ability to function in a "mixed vendor" environment, with multiple business telephone systemsbecomes a key strategic element of IBM's offering. Simply put, companies can offer their employees unified communications without requiring disruptive software migrations or rip-and-replace infrastructure upgrades.
According to Ross Sedgewick, Siemens director of global portfolio marketing applications, the factor that made this integration feasible was the embracein both productsof a service-oriented architecture (SoA). "We're very easy to integrate with," Sedgewick told Enterprise VoIPplanet.com. "These capabilitiesmixed-vendor connectivity, desktop call control, and aggregated presencecan be plugged in as open-standards-based services that fit right into the existing IBM/Lotus Sametime environment. It's like two puzzle pieces fitting together nicely in an open-standards world," he said.
"[IBM] carefully evaluated their choices in terms of what to build, what to source, and where to source it," Sedgewick continued, "and they chose to integrate the Siemens OpenScape product to provide that telephony capability. Since we interoperate and connect with any PBX, it gives IBM the widest addressable market opportunity for their Sametime Unified Telephony offering."
Sametime Unified Telephony is expected to be available in the first half of 2008. Pricing and packaging are under consideration