Cisco Unity

The Cisco Unity solution offers organizations a reliable, secure, scalable, feature-rich voice and unified messaging platform as part of a unified communications solution. Its unified messaging with Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino allows organizations to access e-mail, voice, and fax messages from a single inbox anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Based on industry standards, the Cisco Unity system transparently integrates with your network, communication applications, and clients.

Whether you are in the office, at home, or on the road, the Cisco Unity system allows you to manage all your messages using the tool of your choice-laptop, telephone, desktop PC, or mobile phone. You decide if, when, and how you access and respond to your messages. Respond with the best medium for your communication-reply to e-mail messages with voicemail or conversely; or send a message with text, attached file, or URL.

You need access to your messages no matter where you are, so you can respond quickly. A variety of clients, such as Cisco® Unified Personal Communicator, Internet browser clients, and e-mail clients, allow you and your employees to view your voice messaging inbox on a PC, and prioritize messages at a glance. You can also access messages through your Cisco Unified IP phone user interface or mobile clients-in other words, you can enjoy unified messaging at your workspace anytime, anywhere, and over any device.

Cisco Unity unified messaging allows you to check your e-mail, voice, and fax messages over a telephone, so you can manage all your messages when you are out of the office. With speech access you can access and control your messages by using intuitive voice commands, such as natural language commands, or address a voice message by speaking the person's name, even when operating hands-free. You can travel without a laptop and still be in touch. If you do not have an Internet connection, simply dial in to check all your messages.

Today's workforce is increasingly mobile, and you need access to your messages when away from the office. Cisco Unity unified messaging offers mobile phone clients for the most popular handheld smartphones such as Blackberry and Treo. Executives, professionals, sales teams, and other mobile workers can see who has left them messages and the time the messages were left, and then quickly access and prioritize specific messages while on the road.

The Cisco Unity system is designed to increase your productivity when on the go even if you do not have a smartphone. Interrupted session recovery allows you to return to the same place in your voice message inbox if your call is interrupted, as is common on mobile phones, saving you the hassle of starting again. The Cisco Unity solution can notify your mobile phone or other communications device of any message you have received-allowing you to respond as quickly as you want. You can even specify which types of messages you want to be notified of and when.

Cisco Unity unified messaging takes full advantage of existing communications infrastructure investments by integrating with older private branch exchanges (PBXs) and interoperating with older voicemail systems. The Cisco Unity solution supports older PBX systems and Cisco Unified Communications Manager-even simultaneously-paving the way for a cost-effective migration to full IP telephony. The optional Cisco Unity Audio Messaging Interchange Specification - Analog (AMIS-A) Networking Module allows message interchange between disparate voice messaging systems that support this industry-standard messaging protocol, whereas Cisco Unity Bridge helps enable advanced message interchange functions with Avaya and Octel voice messaging systems. With AMIS-A and Cisco Unity Bridge, customers who are deploying a Cisco Unity system can continue using their older messaging systems, helping ensure a smooth transition.

The Cisco Unity system offers unified messaging solutions designed specifically to integrate with your existing Exchange or Domino environment. Administrators have to manage only one user account for both e-mail and voicemail messages. The Cisco Unity system can use your existing Domino or Active Directory infrastructure to best advantage. By sharing a common directory, Cisco Unity servers can be networked together across multiple sites, providing flexibility in deploying messaging throughout your organization and allowing effective communications. The system can accomplish this networking without requiring an expensive messaging environment upgrade, and can support your user base with a consistent experience even if you transition between e-mail environments.

Cisco Unity unified messaging allows you to emulate your existing telephone user interface so your users can migrate to a new system without confusion. It also supports the basic voicemail features your users expect, such as message waiting indicators without additional add-ons.

Organizations must make sure their messages remain secure and compliant while employees are moving, even in a full unified messaging environment. With highly secure messaging, the Cisco Unity solution encrypts your messages with an expirable key, helping assure you of compliance with your organization's voice message retention policy. Secure messaging also prevents accidental disclosure of voice messages outside your organization, and helps guarantee that private messages remain private, even if listened to through a computer client.

The Cisco Unity solution is a well-tested voice and unified messaging system that has undergone extensive testing and been deployed in large environments over the last 10 years. The Cisco Unity messaging system provides high reliability and resiliency for both the messaging server and the message store. If your primary messaging server goes down, the Cisco Unity system provides failover to a second Cisco Unity server, preventing any disruption to callers' experience. If the connection between the Cisco Unity system and the message store is disrupted, the system can continue to take calls and provide users with their messages until the network or message store is restored.

Cisco Unity unified messaging is a highly scalable solution designed to minimize the total cost of ownership (TCO) by maximizing the number of users; PBXs; and client application sessions, such as Cisco Unity Inbox and Cisco Unified Personal Communicator, on a Cisco Unity system. The Cisco Unity solution can grow to fit your company's needs.