Cisco Unity Connections and Cisco Unity Tools

Cisco Unity and Cisco Unity Connection have the options of allowing fax integration with the Cisco Fax Server and other supported third party fax servers. Cisco Unity has supported this feature for a long time, but Cisco Unity Connection only supports Cisco Fax Server integration beginning with Cisco Unity Connections 7.0. Cisco Unity Connection does not support third party fax integration. Unified messaging creates a unified inbox where E-Mail, voicemail, and fax messages are available from one E-Mail client. Cisco Unity Connection supports IMAP E-Mail integration while Cisco Unity allows IMAP, Microsoft Exchange, and IBM Domino integration. Cisco Unity Connection 7.0 has included some key features that will allow customers to start considering the migration of Cisco Unity to Cisco Unity Connection. Cisco has included a migration tool called COBRAS (Cisco Object Backup and Restore Application Suite) to allow customers to migrate their Microsoft Windows based Unity installation to the hardened Linux appliance operating system model used in Cisco Unity Connection 2.x and 7.x. COBRAS training videos and technical assistance is available at http://www.ciscounitytools.com/App_COBRAS.htm. Jeff Lindborg is one of the authors of the Cisco Press Cisco Unity Deployment and Solutions Guide available for purchase at http://www.ciscopress.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=1587051184. Jeff Lindborg runs the Cisco Unity Tools website which has hours and hours of training videos on the Cisco Unity and Cisco Unity Connnection products (http://www.ciscounitytools.com/App_AlphabeticalListing.htm). Cisco Unity Connection also supports active / active redundancy models that allow load sharing between two servers providing high availability voicemail services. Cisco Unity supports redundancy, but is a licensed feature in which one server is active and the other server is a cold standby. Cisco Unity’s failover model does not allow any load sharing. Cisco Unity Connection 7.0 offers many new Cisco Unity features that were previously not available in the product. It will be very interesting to see how much traction the Unity Connection product will get in the voicemail market. It’s important to note that Cisco Unity Connection runs co-resident with Cisco Unified Communication Manager on the same 7816 or 7828 server platforms. This product offering is referred to as Cisco Unified Communications Manager Business Edition (CUCMBE) and is available in version 6.0 and 7.0. CUCMBE 6.0 includes CUCM 6.x and Cisco Unity Connection (CUC) 2.x, while CUCMBE 7.0 includes CUCM 7.x and CUC 7.x. Cisco Unity is the most popular Cisco messaging solution deployed today, so the rest of the Unity blog series will focus on this product, but CUC and CUE will be mentioned at times.