Is Exchange 2010 a Replacement for Legacy Voicemail?

One of the great things about my job as a Technical Trainer is that I get to test drive, then use, some of the newest and coolest software packages. And, to the annoyance of my friends in the IT field, I mostly don’t have to deal with the problems in deployment or the day-to-day drudgery of managing an enterprise. I guess that’s a nice way of saying I understand their pain, without having to endure any of it myself.

I recently attended Exchange 2010 Ignite training. Three days of test driving the latest and greatest iteration of Microsoft’s email system. It’s quite an impressive product, loaded with new functionality and redesigned for unbelievable degree of robustness. While there I spent some time exploring something near and dear to my heart, their implementation of Unified Messaging (UM).  It was great to learn a bit about deploying Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging in the context of a legacy voicemail replacement – an area where I spent a considerable amount of time.

The last slide of the last lecture had a fascinating bullet point – “A  Natural Replacement for Legacy Voicemail”. What you’ll find while comparing a legacy voicemail to Exchange is that a lot of those “Legacy Features” such as voice distribution lists and cascading pager notifications are missing. This may not be a huge deal, since your company may not use them anyhow. However, it suffices to say that it’s not a voicemail system but an implementation of voice into a more email mail centric system. It’s a tradeoff -  legacy functionality for more a more modern feature set. Assuming  of course that you want those new features and can live without the legacy ones such as voice mail networking with legacy systems via VPIM or AMIS or replacing a familiar telephone user interface (TUI) with an unusual version.

Upgrading to Exchange 2010 requires a fork lift upgrade. There is no process to upgrade your existing 2003 or 2007 systems. However,  Exchange 2010 is 2003 and 2007 capable. Meaning, you can have both 2003 and 2007 systems in your Exchange 2010 enterprise. So you don’t upgrade, you add the new system then move the users over . Although you can go right from 2007 to 2010 in controlled manner,  you cannot upgrade your 2007 UM though, only move those users.

One thing I found vexing in both 2007 and now again in 2010 Unified Messaging is how tedious it is to manage voice features for an Exchange user. Although the management interface has been streamlined and improved I found it tough  to go back and view or make changes once I set up a voice user. Near as I could figure, I could enable or disable UM for a user, anything else, I’d have to use a wizard again.

The last two criticisms I have deal with Speech. Speech recognition is a processor intensive function, not only on Exchange but on a CallXpress system as well. Speech also has a few subtleties that one should think about in an administration context (Hence, it makes sense to be able to make user changes easy). Take name changes for instance. What happens when “Holly Holt” gets married and now is Holly Smythe, only pronounced “Smith”. What if she wants her old name, her new name, and maybe “Holly Holt-Smythe” as well? We can do this. We can also handle both Holly Smythe and Olly Smith by a few tweaks in administration. By the way, I asked that exact question in the class.

I got the reaction I probably deserved by asking such a thing at 4PM on a Friday. I’ll blame it on that rather than any product deficiencies. I spent  a bit of time trying to explore this further on the web and couldn’t land anywhere that described sizing, speech recognition, and disambiguation.

MS Exchange 2010 also supports Speech to Text. The caller leaves a voicemail message, and Exchange converts it to a text email. Very slick. We’ve had that with our “got-voice” integration for some time. We were given what I’d describe as an oblique warning that this is processor intensive and we shouldn’t give it to every user. Suffices to say, too much of a good thing here is probably a bad thing. I couldn’t find much info anywhere on that either, other than everyone agreeing it was cool. I’m guessing that since I’ve heard that it’s speech to text transcription accuracy is less than 50%, the more users added means the less likely the messages will be transcribed properly.

Not that I’m trying to be mean, these two features are very cool. There are, however, a lot of problems that pop up during speech deployment. CallXpress has the tools to deal with these issues and without making light of the complexities, they are pretty straight forward.

Make no mistake, it’s a cool system with lots of other cutting edge features such as Rights Management, Exchange Online (Cloud access),  a very cool new look and feel to both Outlook and OWA, and awesome high availability and archiving capability. The way Microsoft has redesigned the architecture, with it’s resulting many-fold increase in hardware efficiency, probably makes the upgrade worthwhile.

However, Unified Messaging was disappointing. With it’s ability to integrate to all versions of Exchange (2010 soon to come, no doubt) CallXpress allows you to add UM capabilities as awesome and rich as these new features while at the same time providing true legacy voicemail replacement and continuity during an upgrade.

Sharp HealthCare Selects CallXpress 8 for Centralized Communications Network

Replaces End of Life Octel^® System and Achieves High Availability

FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif., February 10, 2010 – Communications solutions innovator Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) today announced that CallXpress^® 8 was selected by Sharp HealthCare (Sharp), San Diego’s largest and most comprehensive healthcare organization, to centralize its infrastructure.  Sharp selected CallXpress due to its ability to centralize three standalone Octel voicemail systems onto a single system, while offering dual survivable call servers to protect against critical network failures.

Sharp is a not-for-profit integrated regional health care leader with more than 12 facilities including seven hospitals, two medical groups, medical clinics, urgent care centers, skilled nursing facilities as well as a variety of other community health education programs and related services.  Sharp serves more than three million people, operates 1,870 beds and has approximately 2,600 physicians on medical staffs, more than 1,000 physicians in affiliated medical groups and more than 14,000 employees.

Sharp needed to replace three Octel voicemail systems that were announced ‘end of life.’ The main objective was to identify a solution that offered centralization, thereby eliminating the required maintenance for those Octel systems, and the risk of end users being without voicemail service in the event of a critical system failure.  Sharp conducted an extensive review process with a Technical Review Committee tasked with identifying the right solution.  AVST’s CallXpress was selected in large part for its high availability and the ability to support its mixed TDM/hybrid switches and IP PBXs.

Sharp took great care to ensure the transition from Octel to CallXpress was a smooth process for end users and cites the ease of use in CallXpress as instrumental in the process. “The migration from Octel to CallXpress was one of our biggest implementations and the transition was virtually unnoticeable to our users.  They didn’t need much training since the CallXpress system mimicked the command structure of the Octel telephone user interface (TUI). On the day of the CallXpress cutover, our support staff team members were waiting for help desk calls that never came,” said Steve Cates, Sharp HealthCare Telecommunications Manager.

Today, the Sharp network has three major hub PBXs that are fully redundant and CallXpress supports nearly 4,000 voicemail users and handles approximately 495,000 calls per month.  Outside callers utilize more than 70 system-wide automated attendant menus in CallXpress that efficiently route them to the physician, hospital, department or employee they’re trying to reach.

With call volumes of this magnitude, and with physicians and hospitals relying on uninterrupted communications, CallXpress provides the high availability that Sharp demanded. Sharp now achieves high availability by utilizing a system server and two call servers. In this configuration, if either of the call servers fails, the other is able to answer and process calls, as well as record messages, without the loss of CallXpress application functionality.

Cates added, “Before CallXpress, system maintenance was a real challenge.  We had three separate systems that had to be maintained and everything had to be done after hours to ensure that physicians, staff and other essential personnel had access to voicemail during business hours.  If one system went down, we had a critical situation on our hands with no backup in place and thousands of messages that could be lost.  The CallXpress multiple call server architecture has brought us peace of mind.”

In addition to centralization, CallXpress offered Sharp HealthCare a robust platform with features that make users more accessible and mobile.  CallXpress comes with multiple mobility features, including unified messaging, personal assistant, message notification, single number, and speech recognition for hands-free communications.

Sharp worked closely with Advanced Call Processing (ACP), a trusted partner and AVST reseller, to identify the right solution.   “We have a great deal of experience with CallXpress and understand the needs of the Sharp team,” said Rob Simpson, President of ACP.  “CallXpress is a robust solution that can support, with ease, a high call volume, centralized network like Sharp’s.  The Sharp team needed a solution that offered the next level of reliability and CallXpress was a perfect fit.”

“CallXpress was designed to support the exact scenario that the Sharp network presented,” said Denny Michael, AVST Vice President of Marketing.  “They needed a seamless replacement of their legacy voicemail system, centralization to provide cost savings and high availability for application resiliency. We look forward to supporting Sharp HealthCare as they expand their network and deploy some of the additional functionality available in CallXpress.”

CallXpress 8 delivers a powerful suite of Unified Communications applications including advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities to help businesses become more productive.  For more information about AVST’s products visit the company’s website at www.avst.com.

About Sharp HealthCare
Sharp HealthCare is San Diego’s most comprehensive health care delivery system. It is recognized for clinical excellence for services in cardiac, cancer and multiorgan transplantation, as well as orthopaedics, rehabilitation, behavioral health and women’s health. Sharp HealthCare has been widely acclaimed for its commitment to transform the health care experience for patients, physicians and staff through an organization-wide performance improvement initiative called The Sharp Experience. The Sharp system includes four acute-care hospitals, three specialty hospitals, two affiliated medical groups and a health plan. To learn more about Sharp, visit www.sharp.com.

About Advanced Call Processing (ACP)
Advanced Call Processing (ACP) is a comprehensive provider of telecommunications services and solutions with a customer base spread across the United States and throughout the world.  Established in 1990, ACP has enjoyed exceptional growth, while supplying customized solutions for hundreds of businesses and government agencies.    ACP has assisted hundred of companies to achieve their business goals while controlling costs through the effective deployment of communications technology.

About AVST
Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of communications solutions with over 10 million users that rely on its products and services to maximize their productivity. With nearly 30 years of innovation excellence, AVST is focused on delivering solutions that increase user and business productivity. Its flagship Unified Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers unprecedented interoperability and delivers advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization can protect and extend its existing data and telephony infrastructure investment — now and into the future.

Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices across the United States. AVST’s Unified Communications solutions are sold and supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company’s website at www.avst.com.

10 Key Advantages of CallXpress

1. Legacy call processing…If you are looking at replacing a legacy voicemail system, CallXpress offers two advantage sets. First, since CallXpress was on the market when the legacy system was originally purchased, it’s safe to say CallXpress can duplicate all of the functionality in use on the older legacy systems. When most of the new generation of voice messaging systems were created, little concern was given to matching the older legacy feature sets. With CallXpress, all of those features are still on the system. It’s nice to know there won’t be any nasty surprises when the system goes into service.
2. Legacy voicemail retraining…One of the barriers to replacing legacy systems has always been the need to retrain the users with a new telephone user interface. With CallXpress, emulation interfaces are available for the legacy systems you might replace allowing for a smoother transition.
3. Disparate PBXs…Customers with multiple locations face even more challenges then single-site customers. The flexibility you’ll find in CallXpress will make it easier to satisfy the needs of multi-site customers. For customers with more than one type PBX in their network, CallXpress’ ability to integrate to any type of telephone system will make early standardization possible.
4. Multiple and disparate e-mail environments…For those companies with multiple types of e-mail technology deployed, or those who forsee a migration to a new platform in their future, the fact that CallXpress integrates to all e-mail systems can make it easier to start the process of replacing their voice messaging infrastructure.
5. Centralized administration requirement…Those same multi-site customers will benefit from CallXpress’ ability to maintain multiple systems as if they were one using the system’s Global User Administration capabilities, as well as the fact that multiple systems deployed remotely now can be consolidated at a later date if the customer moves to a new centralized telephony infrastructure.
6. Transitional IPT deployment…Particularly, for those customers looking at a current or future migration to an IPT infrastructure, the fact that CallXpress not only integrates to the older TDM systems as well as all of the IPT systems, but that it can also support both system types ay the same time, makes it easier to plan and execute those types of migrations.
7. Unified messaging retention issues…For many customers, the prospect of implementing unified messaging brings with it concerns over the implications of storing voice messages on the e-mail server. With the flexible unified messaging architecture in CallXpress, customers can have complete control over the architecture used to deploy unified messaging.
8. Virtual desktop…For those customers with a mobile workforce, concern over how to increase the productivity of those workers can be addressed with the new presence and mobility features now available in CallXpress. CallXpress offers the most robust mobile presence and productivity package on the market today. 
9. A la carte feature delivery…Unlike many of the competing systems, the CallXpress licensing scheme allows for a truly a la carte approach to selection of solutions and features. Customers need only pay for those features they wish to deploy.
10. IT flexibility and economics…Throughout the process of selecting solutions and configuring deployment architectures, the IT departments will find that CallXpress is the most ‘LAN-friendly’ product on the market today. When it’s deployed in an enterprise, it fits into the environment like any other application server on the customer network, matching the IT department requirements for security, control and monitoring.

CallXpress is a Good Match for any E-mail System

Did you know CallXpress unified messaging integrates with virtually any e-mail environment including Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, Novell Groupwise, Mirapoint, and any IMAP compliant e-mail system?

And if your company uses multiple e-mail environments, CallXpress can deliver unified messaging capabilities where competitors cannot!

Click here to view the CallXpress 8 and CallXpress 7.91 e-mail access specifications.

What Flavor of Unified Messaging is Right for You?

THE MANY FLAVORS OF UNIFIED MESSAGING

CallXpress is the most flexible Unified Messaging (UM) system on the market today. It offers customers complete flexibility in how they wish to deploy and use UM. Unlike all other competing products, CallXpress allows users to deploy any type and mix of UM on a system, as well as allowing users to mix UM and traditional voicemail users on the same system. CallXpress supports both of the popular UM architecture types: Server-based UM and Client-based UM.

CallXpress was the very first product to offer Unified Messaging (UM) solutions to customers and most recently took the top spot for the most complete UM solution on the market today when evaluated against other UM providers. 

If you want to know what your real UM options are, take a look at some of the related articles posted below to learn more about UM from the experts at AVST.

 Related Articles:

• Know Your Options: Understanding Your Unified Messaging Choices whitepaper
• The 5 C’s (Considerations) for Unified Messaging blog post
• Defining the Right Path to Unified Messaging – blog post part 1
• Defining the Right Path to Unified Messaging – blog post part 2
• Unified Messaging Resource Center

Defining the Right Path to Unified Messaging – part 2

(part 2 of 2 in blog series) I already spent some time discussing the purpose of Unified Messaging and provided a high level overview of the most popular feature sets. Now I want to take you behind the scenes and explore how Unified Messaging can be deployed.

So, let’s take a look at the various architectures used to support Unified Messaging in CallXpress. By architecture, I am simply referring to the different ways to connect your voicemail system, your telephone system, and your e-mail system to deliver Unified Messaging functionality. There are four generally recognized architectures accepted in the market today. AVST’s marketing department created a cool brochure that outlines the “Four Flavors of Unified Messaging.”   I’m going to break down each architecture for you so you understand them, and then I’m going to talk about what the implications are for using 0one of these architectures as opposed to another. Read more

Do You Understand these 5 Critical Considerations for Successful Unified Messaging Deployment?

Compliance

As mentioned in Tom Minifie’s "Message Archive for Compliance" blog post, compliance, electronic discovery, regulatory inquiries, and retention policies have become common topics within the business environment over the last few years.  Existing Federal and State regulations regarding the retention and storage of electronic information means that it is critical to pay close attention to corporate compliance issues when considering the various Unified Messaging solution architectures.

AVST’s Recommendation: Consult with your corporate compliance officer or legal counsel to ensure you pick the Unified Messaging architecture that best meets your organization’s compliance requirements.  If you haven’t already done so, make sure you read up on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) that impact electronically stored information (ESI).

Confidentiality

Preventing the external distribution of confidential corporate voice, e-mail and fax messages is, in many cases, as critical a consideration as compliance when evaluating Unified Messaging solutions.

AVST’s Recommendation: Thoroughly understand your organization’s requirements for protecting the confidentiality of corporate data to ensure you select the correct Unified Messaging architecture for your business.

Configuration

Selecting a Unified Messaging solution that has the architectural flexibility to future proof your investment is another critical consideration. AVST uniquely offers four different architectural options in its Unified Messaging solution to ensure your organization has the maximum deployment flexibility today and, just as importantly, the ability to change the configuration of your Unified Messaging solution in the future based upon the evolving needs of your organization.

AVST’s Recommendation: Attend an AVST webinar on Unified Messaging to ensure that you fully understand the implications of deploying each different Unified Messaging architecture.  We recommend the following recorded webinars: "Four Flavors of Unified Messaging" and "Defining the Right Path to Unified Messaging".

Capability

Understanding the capabilities of each Unified Messaging solution you are evaluating is another critical consideration. What are the features and flexibility of the solution? Does it meet the requirements of your users that will be accessing the solution via the desktop, web, phone and/or mobile device? Can you deploy different feature sets for different users?

AVST’s Recommendation: Complete the Unified Messaging checklist to ensure that the Unified Messaging solutions you are evaluating have the features and flexibility your organization demands.

Cost

Understanding the total cost of ownership (TCO) for each Unified Messaging solution you are evaluating is another key consideration. Some questions to consider (and quantify) are:

• Do I have to buy licenses for all employees in my organization?
• How much will it cost me to add additional users in the future?
• How much is the annual maintenance?
• What additional hardware and software is required to deploy?
• Do I need to upgrade or replace my groupware solution to get Unified Messaging?
• Will the Unified Messaging solution integrate with my existing and future telephony infrastructure?
• How much additional cost is involved if I decide to switch groupware solutions in the future?
• How much will it cost to implement the Unified Messaging solution?

AVST’s Recommendation: Develop a clear set of pricing, configuration and support guidelines and apply it to each Unified Messaging solution you are evaluating. Consider a five year TCO timeframe to ensure that you have the whole picture

What Every IT Administrator Should Know about Reaping the Cost Cutting Benefits of Unified Communications

Has the struggling economy led you to re-evaluate how your organization communicates?  When AVST set out to deliver an open communication platform,  over 26 years ago, we did so with our customers’ pocketbook in mind! Here are some quick tips on how AVST’s Unified Communication solution can save your company money.

1. Our Unified Communication platform, CallXpress interoperates into your existing telephony and groupware infrastructure leveraging your existing investments and  minimizing  your short term capital expenditures;
2. Unified Messaging offers a single message access point for mobile and office workers increasing your employees personal productivity;
3. Self service applications like Auto Agent, Auto Attendant, Notification, and Speech-based Personal Assistant remove human latency and expense;
4. Internet based communication such as our Web PhoneManager reduces traditional telephone service to access voicemail and IT solution deployment costs for thick client (desktop) solutions;
5. Single number access for fixed and mobile environments increases call completion and productivity;
6. Software-based faxing eliminates fax machines and associated maintenance and supply expenses and improved individual productivity;
7. Unlimited voicemail mailbox licensing saves your enterprise significant cost on a legacy voicemail platform replacement;
8. Open standards based hardware significantly reduces ongoing maintenance costs and TCO of platform versus legacy platforms;
9. Telephone User Interface emulations minimize user training and associated cost when transitioning your legacy voicemail system to CallXpress;
10. Ala-carte feature delivery for different segments of workforce minimizes incremental licensing cost; and
11. AVST in partnership with CIT offers flexible financing plans

 Related Articles:

• UC End User Productivity Study Final – posted by Blair Pleasant, President & Principal Analyst
  COMMfusion

 

Defining the Right Path to Unified Messaging

(part 1 of 2 in blog series) Unified Messaging is interesting. It’s been around long enough where there’s a number of ways to deploy it. Everyone has a slightly different idea on how you should do that. And if nothing else, when you’re done reading this two part blog post, you should understand the ways of deploying it, which in turn should give you some direction when making choices for your enterprise.

So what is Unified Messaging about? It’s really about access to messages. Unified Messaging provides easier, more productive access to all your message types: voice, fax and e-mail. Not only does Unified Messaging provide access to all your message types but it also enables access from the terminal or device you’d like to use, regardless of location. It’s certainly easy to see that sitting at our desks at work, we have an e-mail client and we spend much of our day inside there. Putting a voice and a fax message into that e-mail client makes it much easier to manage our activities. By integrating these items into a single system, I can now group all my messages based on subject or based on promotions and programs I am working on. I can also use the same way of working, the same kind of prioritization of the e-mail inbox to look for important messages to cover all types of messages, not just e-mail. But it goes beyond that because for some of us, working at a desktop all day long isn’t an option. In today’s mobile environment the urgency to receive messages in a timely manner is magnified, and the benefit of managing all your messages from a single screen is crucial. Read more

AVST UM Survey Results

Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete our brief online Unified Messaging survey. We plan to incorporate these type of surveys into our community on a regular basis so we can continue to monitor how you, OUR CALLXPRESS CUSTOMERS, are actually using AVST products and services.

First things first… Read more

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