At AVST, we recently held a webinar titled “How to Ensure Continuous Uptime” presented by our Sales Engineer, Mike Bode.  In the webinar Mike discussed how the latest release of AVST CallXpress offers a variety of deployment options to support your emergency preparedness and business continuity objectives, such as:

• Multi-servers for High Availability
• Disaster Recovery through remote Call Servers
• Redundant server components
• Built-in system reliability

As usual, we received a lot of great questions during the webinar which Mike answered in the live session.  One question came from several customers which stood out to me as something that deserves more of an explanation, -I’m sure it will hit home with your organization as well.  The question was, “With all this redundancy in place, is it still important to perform periodic backups?”

The answer simply put is, YES.  Just like any other mission critical application, periodic backups of CallXpress should be a critical component of any organization’s Disaster Recovery plan.

Although we covered this in the webinar, I thought it would be a good idea for Mike to expound how CallXpress offers a wide range of high reliability, high availability and disaster recovery options.  Most of the webinar focused on hardware redundancy and the distributed architecture of CallXpress.  What was not covered were some of the more granular software level redundancy options which make up the foundation of any CallXpress deployment. This is what he told me:

Automated Backup

CallXpress makes a complete system backup of the System Server and each Call Server to the Online Backup location every day during the Daily Maintenance routine. A complete Online Backup of CallXpress is comprised of the following pieces:

• Daily Maintenance backup of the System Server
• Daily Maintenance backup of each Call Server

Backing up CallXpress consists of the following activities:

• Configuring the CallXpress File Manager service on the System Server and the Call Servers with administrator-level logon rights.
• Configuring an Online Backup Location
• Running a scheduled or a complete Daily Maintenance on the System Server and the Call Servers to create an Online Backup of the system database. The scheduled Daily Maintenance routine automatically backs up the following every time it runs:
  • System Data
  • Mailbox configuration data
  • Name recordings, greetings, announcements
  • Local store messages
  • Message tracking data
  • Registry data
  • Report data

Maintaining a current and complete System Backup at the Online Backup location will support a high rate of survivability and availability.

Daily Maintenance can be scheduled to run on a regular basis. If the customer has configured an Online Backup location, the backup will also be performed at that time.  Alternatively, Daily Maintenance can be manually invoked at any time.  Furthermore, when running Daily Maintenance manually, a Complete Backup or a Backup without messages can be selected.

When configuring the Online Backup location, the following parameters can be defined:

• Report Data Retention
• Message Retention
• Greetings, Names & Announcement Retention
• Diagnostic Log Retention
• Speech Utterance Retention (ASR enabled only)

All parameters can be set between one (1) and sixty (60) days.  Once the parameters have been defined, CallXpress will automatically maintain “X” number of days of backups.

If you’re interested in learning more about the backup capabilities supported within the CallXpress application, a complete overview can be found here.

In my next blog post I’ll talk about using monitoring and diagnostics to proactively monitor the health of the system

Remember, if you cannot find something you are looking for on our website, or you are not sure who to contact, you are always welcome to send questions.  Simply email us at info@avst.com, and we will have the appropriate person send you an answer.

• Combining all of the updates that have been released for 7.91 into a single install
• Adding support for Lotus Notes 8.5
• Updating the Mitel MiTAI SDK for improved performance and stability in certain customer environments
• Updating the Dialogic software for improved performance and stability on systems with quad-core processors

Customers may upgrade to CallXpress 7.92 through December 31, 2009. After that, CallXpress 7.92 is End of Sale and will only be available to XpressCare covered customers already at 7.9 or 7.91.

Please refer to the AVST Customer Product Bulletin #128 for additional details including CallXpress 7.92 product lifecycle information.

Conscious of the current global economy and its effect on our customers, AVST has decided to take a brief pause from hosting our annual conference to focus efforts on expanding  the benefits of the AVST online community.  During this time, we have been talking to customers from around the country about options for the 2010 CallXpress End User Conference.  The feedback has been consistent – end users want to participate, but they are limited by corporate travel restrictions.

So, AVST has decided to change the format of the CallXpress End User Conference in 2010 to ensure we provide as many customers as possible with the opportunity to connect and collaborate with their peers.  Instead of requiring end users from all over the world to travel to a single location, starting in Spring 2010, AVST will be taking the show on the road and offering a series of 1-day end user seminars across the U.S. The multi-city tour will allow users to come together at regional venues to share ideas and expertise with other users, as well as provide access to AVST executives and product specialists in a small group environment.

The final cities will be announced on AVST Blog soon…stay tuned for more information!

Feature highlights:

• Tertiary System Server for CallXpress high availability solution to meet organizations’ disaster recovery initiatives
• Enhanced unified messaging for IMAP to support Google Gmail and other secure IMAP e-mail servers and services
• Lotus Notes 8.5 support for unified messaging users
• Windows 7 Professional support for end-user and administrative client applications
• AVST Developer Network featuring UCConnect, a Microsoft .NET development environment used to create custom applications. Click here to learn more or join the AVST Developer Network.  

In a recent report entitled “Critical Capabilities for Corporate Telephony,”¹ leading industry research firm Gartner identified architecture, scalability, high availability, and UC integration capability as the primary critical capabilities for building next generation corporate telephony.  These four critical capabilities are also the core framework of the CallXpress 8 platform.  To learn more about the CallXpress platform, visit the AVST website, or read CallXpress 8.1 news release.

CallXpress 8.1 is scheduled for general availability in Q1 2010 through AVST’s established reseller channels.

¹ _{Gartner “Critical Capabilities for Corporate Telephony”, by Jay Lassman and Steve Blood.September  11, 2009}

Event Details:

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Discussion; 3:30pm – 5:00pm
Cathedral Hill Meeting Room, 4th Floor

Reception; immediately following from 5:00pm -7:00pm
Pacific Terrace Foyer

Click here to R.S.V.P. by November 2nd

Attending Senior Mangement Team:
Hardy Myers, President and CEO
Tom Minifie, CTO
Mike Berlin, VP of Sales
Denny Michael, VP of Marketing

Hotel Information:
Intercontinental San Francisco Hotel
  888 Howard Street
  San Francisco, CA 94103
  888-811-4273
The InterContinental San Francisco is adjacent to the Moscone West Convention Center

Click here to R.S.V.P. by November 2nd

In addition to our online presence on AVST Blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, AVST has also branded a channel on YouTube to share videos with the AVST Community.  Over the past two months, over 10 new videos have been uploaded to the AVST Channel. 

 Watch AVST on YouTube

We at AVST are committed to creating an ongoing, shared social space for people who are geographically dispersed. We believe the benefits of connecting people and building relationships across boundaries of geography or discipline will not only stimulate the capture of ideas to better our product offerings, but it will also improve the peer-to-peer collaboration and satisfaction of our loyal customers. Read the AVST Social Networking Blog Post

• Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009 website
• Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009 event brochure
• Event Agenda

• Name your telephony system — CallXpress integrates with it. CallXpress offers the broadest interoperability of any enterprise class solution with over 250 TDM, IP-PBX, and Centrex integrations to Nortel, Avaya^®, Alcatel^®, Cisco^®, NEC^®, Siemens^®, Mitel^® and more.
• AVST offers a Future Proofing Guarantee. We understand the PBX you have today might not be the one you have tomorrow. Our Future Proofing Guarantee provides a free PBX software integration when you are ready to transition to IP or planning a change to your existing switch.
• CallXpress uniquely supports up to 10 different telephony integrations on a CallXpress system.

The following limited time future proof incentives are being offered to Nortel customers who want to enhance their communications infrastructure with CallXpress.

Stimulus Package Pricing

CallXpress offers stimulus package pricing including advanced call processing and voicemail functionality, plus 50 unified messaging and personal assistant user licenses.

Free Alternate Telephone User Interface (TUI)

Select from a variety of TUIs that mimic the Nortel Meridian Mail, Octel®, and other popular first generation voicemail systems to minimize re-training.

Free On-line Administrative Training Course

Administrators can quickly learn to configure and maintain their CallXpress system in this self-paced web training course.

Future Proofing Guarantee

Unique lifetime Future Proofing Guarantee provides, with certain limited exceptions, an IP or TDM software integration at no additional charge when a customer is ready to transition to one of the many industry-leading IP and TDM telephony solutions that AVST supports.

To learn more about the Nortel Investment Protection Program from AVST, please visit the Nortel Investment Protection Program website.

Related Links:

• Nortel Investment Protection Program Brochure
• AVST Announces Nortel Investment Protection Program Press Release
• Free educational webinar hosted by Voice Report titled “The Nortel Auction: Get Ready for an All-New Enterprise PBX Market"

In today’s challenging environment, your organization needs to get more work done with less resources and time. The CallXpress Unified Communications platform turns your telephone system into a productivity tool. With nearly 30 years of innovation excellence, AVST is focused on delivering solutions that increase user and business productivity.

In addition to the powerful suite of Unified Communications applications that provide the foundation for the CallXpress 8 platform — advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities — AVST partnerships provide several innovative technologies to develop custom solutions to further extend the power of the platform.

Want to learn more about the options available to you as a CallXpress customer? Register to attend our free educational webinar series discover how you can make the most of your existing CallXpress system.

Join AVST and Product Experts from Open Text Corporation, Unimax Systems Corporation and Vault Solutions LLC for a Series of Educational Webinars Demonstrating the Interoperability of CallXpress

The upcoming AVST Live! webinar series includes the following partner sessions:

• “Top Reasons to Implement a Fax over IP Solution” presented by Open Text Corporation – Tuesday, August 18, 2009, 11:30 a.m. Eastern/8:30 a.m. Pacific
• “Unify and Simplify the Administration of Your Telephony and Business Systems” presented with Unimax Systems Corporation – Wednesday, August 19, 2009, 2 p.m. Eastern/11 a.m. Pacific
• “Don’t Put your Corporate Data at Risk!  Archive, Retain and Discover Your CallXpress Voicemail Messages” presented by Vault Solutions LLC – Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 2 p.m. Eastern/11 a.m. Pacific

Click here to learn more and register