Overview
Today, a common setup is to have separate voice and email messaging systems. Emails are received by a server such as Exchange and are accessed through mail clients like Outlook. Voicemail systems are independent systems accessed via a telephone. Faxes are often received by stand alone machines and typically have to be manually sorted by a secretary or other personnel in order to be delivered to the correct end user. Both the users and administrators have to use multiple sets of tools, one or more for each of these systems in order to manage their communication. This is a very inefficient setup.
Is it possible to do better than this?
Current UM Market
There are currently UM solutions in the market. However, they have not been successful in winning adoption. What is the reason for this?
There are a few different issues. Firstly the available solutions are quite expensive. Although there is great value in Unified Messaging, it does not justify some of the investments these solutions require.
Secondly, integration with PBX systems is quite difficult. There are many PBXs available in a fairly fragmented market. Each PBX has its own quirks and eccentricities that require attention. This makes creating a UM solution that works for a large portion of the market very difficult thereby creating a large expense.
Thirdly, enterprises are fundamentally political. The organizations that controlled voice and email systems in the past were often diverse. The move to a UM solution poses relevant questions; who is responsible? Who receives the budget? The deployment of UM in a company often results in a control struggle, hindering adoption.
Finally there is a channel problem. Companies that created UM solutions in the past also developed voicemail systems. Salespeople were trained and incentivised to push the old voicemail systems. Selling Unified Messaging required a certain degree of cultural change and that simply did not happen at many of these companies.
So why is there an opportunity for Microsoft to enter this market and propose a strong offering at this point? A number of reasons have been listed.
The integration of PBX’s is becoming easier. Voice over IP and Fax over IP gateways have been released and are available in the market. They are rather inexpensive and integrate with a large number of the PBXs in the market. The leader in this space is AudioCodes. Microsoft utilizes AudioCodes gateways to make Exchange integrate with many legacy PBXs.
Another point is that VOIP has been gaining momentum in recent years but a unique application for VOIP has not yet come to light. UM is built on VOIP and Microsoft believes that this is a compelling application.
Exchange has a stable business to build upon. There are many Exchange deployments and our focus is to deliver more end user value for these users. UM does just this, letting users get more out of their inbox and allowing administrators to attain more out of their investment in Exchange.
Exchange UM Vision
Based on various parameters, Microsoft has crafted a vision for bringing Unified Messaging to Exchange. Microsoft wants to give value to the end user by bringing new and valuable content including voicemail and fax messages into the Exchange inbox, and make things easier for the administrator by giving them one infrastructure to manage and only one set of tools to be trained.
Part of this vision is to adopt an alternative direction. While UM is achieving new content into your inbox, accessed through the familiar user friendly tools, it is offering a new method by which to access your Exchange data, via a standard telephone. This details the Exchange access method, complementing Outlook, browser access through Outlook Web Access, mobile phone access through Exchange ActiveSync with a new access method, Outlook Voice Access, access through a plain telephone using either speech recognition or touchtone.
Core Tenets
The following are the core tenets of Exchange Unified Messaging. First and perhaps foremost, the unified messaging should be easily deployed and manageable.
In Exchange 2003 Microsoft made great strides in terms of allowing for site consolidation. Exchange 2007 will go even further in this direction. Unified Messaging should not negate this positive development but rather leverage it to allow for voice infrastructure site consolidation.
The solution will be offered at an attractive price which makes it superb value for the customer.
A further point is to focus on the key features. For example, Microsoft does not offer a built in support for message waiting indicator - the flashing light on your phone many traditional voicemail systems offer. For most users who have mail in their inbox, this is hardly necessary. For those who require this feature, Microsoft is working with third parties to offer a solution. However, an exclusive feature is the rich support for calendar access, offering a unique and useful functionality such as the ability to call and notify others that you have been delayed. It is better to create new, innovative and useful features rather than trying to make an exact replica of past voicemail systems and their offered applications.
Both voicemail and email are mission-critical and so reliability is a must for this solution, along with generating a great experience for end users – a policy that is Microsoft’s focus.
Administrator Benefits
The consolidation of all messages into one inbox has a number of benefits to the administrator. It consolidates his world.
With Exchange’s UM solution you are issued with a single point of administration. You only have to be trained on one system and have a single place to do troubleshooting. There’s only one directory infrastructure, Active Directory, which is used for both voice and email. A user is provided for the entire process. There’s a single security infrastructure with one unified security model rather than having to secure two separate discreet systems.
A big point is the potential for site consolidation. Exchange 2003 allowed many organizations to amalgamate worldwide email infrastructure into one or more sites. Voicemail systems did not allow for this consolidation. Exchange Unified Messaging has made this possible. Even in a case where there is a PBX at each office, you can consolidate the voicemail systems in a few sites. As per previous deployments, you do not have to deploy an Exchange server in each office.
User Features
There are a number of features available for the user. Exchange UM takes voicemail messages and receives and delivers faxes into your Exchange inbox.
Microsoft offers rich “voice access” to the Exchange system. You can call into the Unified Messaging server and access your Exchange voicemail, email, calendar and contacts via the phone.
Finally Microsoft has a speech-enabled auto attendant. This allows you to call into a main switchboard number, requesting to speak to John Smith and be transferred to his number. It offers customizable menus which allow you to design menus that enable you to state, “Please say 1 for sales etc.”
How Does Exchange UM work?
You have incoming calls to a PBX from a phone and fax machine via the public switched telephone network, including phones used internally by your organization. The PBX is either traditional or an IP-PBX depending on what sort of infrastructure you have in place. If you have an IP-PBX, this can directly be in contact with the UM server via SIP. If you have a traditional PBX, you will need a VoIP gateway. This gateway will be situated on the same site as the PBX. AudioCodes was selected by Microsoft as the leading provider of media gateways to be its partner for this application. The Unified Messaging server is not found at the same site as the PBX. It is located in your existing forest, and should be deployed close to the rest of your Exchange infrastructure. The Unified Messaging server then communicates with the other Exchange server roles, storing messages on the mailbox server.
Microsoft uses VoIP protocols for communication with the Exchange server. In the Exchange server you just need a plain NIC card. Some UM solutions require ISDN cards and others require custom hardware or other equipment. This is not the case with the Exchange UM solution.
So, what is the story with PBX connectivity? One scenario is where you have an IP-PBX. These are newer systems and their market penetration is still limited, although the number of deployments is rapidly expanding. These types of PBX’s are able to communicate with the Exchange UM solution, without any further requirements.
PBX Connectivity
A majority of organizations still have traditional PBX systems. For these type of systems an AudioCodes gateway sits in between the PBX and the UM server and does translation from TDM to SIP.
It is important to note that VOIP gateways are actually quite cost effective. A minor investment is required when deploying gateways with PBXs ..
Microsoft is working closely with AudioCodes to test that these gateways do in fact work easily and integrate seamlessly with many PBXs. This is a key priority for both Microsoft and AudioCodes.
The gateways support many of the most popular legacy PBXs. Here is a list of PBXs for which support exists, although the list is not entirely exhaustive: Nortel Meridian, Avaya Definity, Siemens, Mitel, NEC, Alcatel, Intecom and others..
Summary
To sum up, the key UM points are the additional value gained from your inbox which includes greater access and a simpler platform to manage.
