VoIP vendors pushing mobility, interoperability

IP PBX/cell phone and VoIP-enabled enterprise apps are on tap at VoiceCon

Vendors at this week's VoiceCon Spring 2007 conference say they want to extend the reach of corporate VoIP technology to mobile users, while making VoIP a more integral part of other corporate applications.

Products on tap from Cisco, Avaya and others promise to tie mobile workers more closely with IP-based messaging, conferencing and call-control servers. The potential benefit is a more-connected, more-mobile workforce - typically revenue-generating or high-value employees, such as sales staff and executives.

Other products at VoiceCon are aimed at linking VoIP more closely with platforms from traditional corporate application vendors, such as SAP, IBM and Microsoft. The payoff, vendors say, is the ability to make workers more responsive to changes in business processes.

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Vendors at this week's VoiceCon Spring 2007 conference say they want to extend the reach of corporate VoIP technology to mobile users, while making VoIP a more integral part of other corporate applications.

Products on tap from Cisco, Avaya and others promise to tie mobile workers more closely with IP-based messaging, conferencing and call-control servers. The potential benefit is a more-connected, more-mobile workforce - typically revenue-generating or high-value employees, such as sales staff and executives.

Other products at VoiceCon are aimed at linking VoIP more closely with platforms from traditional corporate application vendors, such as SAP, IBM and Microsoft. The payoff, vendors say, is the ability to make workers more responsive to changes in business processes.

The VoiceCon show, which is expected to draw 6,000 attendees and 130 exhibitors, runs from March 5 through March 8 at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Kissimmee, Fla.

The industry is well into migrating from digital PBXs based on TDM technology to IP-based systems. Research firm Infonetics says sales of TDM voice systems dropped 22% worldwide last year, while IP PBX sales grew 18%.

This transition from TDM to IP phone lines has been going on for some time. The products hitting the market now are pushing VoIP and IP communications to a new level, says Jeff Snyder, a research vice president with Gartner.

"There was never really a credible story as to why an enterprise needs IP telephony, other than the fact that this is what all the vendors are selling now," Snyder says. "We're finally seeing business cases developing where new voice technologies are helping customers do more important things" than just save money on wiring, long-distance or telecom operations.

Among the VoIP product introductions, Cisco is expected to launch Version 6.0 of its Unified Communications Manager - known previously as CallManager - with new mobility and collaboration features, as well as a VoIP server package for small and midsize companies.

Cisco is introducing its Unified Mobile Communicator client software for cell phones and smart phones, which lets these devices tie into a Cisco-based VoIP infrastructure. The software, based on technology from Cisco's $31 million acquisition of Orative, runs on cell phones and devices based on Microsoft Windows Mobile, Symbian and Research In Motion (BlackBerry), and enables the devices to act as extensions on a Cisco-based IP telephony network, with regular access to all services and applications - such as conferencing, unified messaging and presence. (Devices are required to have both voice and data service plans, because interaction with Cisco servers happens over cellular data networks; voice connectivity is carried over the standard mobile phone radio network.)

Other Unified Communications Manager 6.0 upgrades include an expansion of presence capabilities, with support for as many as 10,000 users in a cluster of Unified Communications Manager servers. Previous support was 1,000. Cisco is launching Unified Communications Manager 6.0 only on its Linux-based appliance operating system this week. (It announced support for a Linux-based IP PBX server a year ago at VoiceCon.) Support for a Windows-based Unified Communications Manager will come in the next 12 months, the company says.