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.

CallXpress 8.1 Announced

Continuing on the success of the CallXpress 8 platform, AVST is pleased to announce CallXpress 8.1.

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}

Legacy Voicemail Users – Know Your Options

Many IT professionals today are advocating the replacement of older voicemail systems that don’t support the mobile work force or are based on obsolete proprietary platforms or technology. Others, unfortunately, continue to bear the burden of the increased maintenance and support costs of legacy voicemail systems that simply do not integrate with new technologies within the organization, nor meet the needs of the modern enterprise.

If you are charged with researching a replacement solution for your first‐generation voicemail system, make sure you KNOW YOUR OPTIONS!

Look for a replacement to your current voicemail system that offers a flexible solution for integrating, automating and improving your business processes. CallXpress was built to achieve maximum return on investment by:

• Minimizing training by mimicking the Telephone User Interface (TUI) of your Nortel Meridian Mail, Octel Aria, Octel Serenade, and other popular first generation voicemail systems
• Leveraging the global administration capabilities of the CallXpress platform to reduce administrative cost
• Automating information delivery accessible to customers 24 x 7
• Allowing for customized IVR applications such as bank by phone, financial reporting, campus directory, 24-hour technical support line, and employee locator
• Providing notification to customers of timely information
• Intelligent routing of calls
• Streamlining message management through unified messaging

Related Links:

• AVST On-Demand Webcast – CallXpress 8 – Ideal Legacy Voicemail Replacement Solution
• Datasheet – CallXpress Legacy Voicemail Replacement
• Nortel Investment Protection Program Resource Library

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.

AVST: The Future Proof Choice

In the wake of Nortel’s recent news, now more than ever, it’s important to invest in applications that can support your existing Nortel^® circuit-switched PBX solution and IP-PBX solution, as well as the solution you choose in the future. While you can’t afford not to think about your future Nortel replacement strategy, performing a massive technology refresh overnight is probably not an option. CallXpress^® facilitates a painless migration with the following benefits:

• 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"

Speech-to-text is a great timesaver technology

In this 2 minute video you’ll hear first hand how speech-to-text has helped our Director of Sales, Denny Michael not only access important messages, but also become more efficient in the process!

Here’s an excerpt from Denny’s video blog:

Suppose you are in a meeting and you are expecting a very important voicemail. You know you can’t call in to retrieve the message because you are in a meeting, but you can read it on your Blackberry or iPhone or other device.  Just having that alone saves you time than having to go back to your voicemails and read it. The other thing, that is interesting about it, is that some people never get to the point in a voicemail, so you’re listening for maybe minutes before they get to the point. With text you can simply look at the message and scan right to the most important piece of information, and you are there.  You’re done. It transforms the way people shave time and be more efficient.

Click on the play button below to watch the entire video.

Related Links:

• AVST Enhances CallXpress with Speech-to-Text blog post
• AVST Enhances Speech-to-Text Technology from GotVoice press release
• GotVoice Enterprise Solutions Datasheet

Discover the Difference in CallXpress 8

If you’ve read my recent blog posts and/or checked out our new CallXpress Resource Center on AVST.com, then you’re already aware that there is a wealth of information posted about the architectural changes and feature enhancements that we’ve incorporated into CallXpress 8.  From new feature and benefits pages to an enhanced 12-page brochure, our marketing team and product management staff have done their best to ensure you have all the information you need to make a thorough evaluation of this power new Unified Communications platform.

If you’re still unclear as to why you should upgrade to CallXpress 8, or if you’re wondering if there is really a need for more features and functionality, then I think you’ll be interested in checking out the two new presentations that our Director of Sales Engineering, Neil Bulter, has put together to help new and existing customers Discover the Difference in CallXpress 8.

Click here to view these short and insightful presentations:

• Discover the Difference – Why Upgrade to CallXpress 8
• Transform Your Voicemail – Why CallXpress 8 is the Perfect Legacy Voicemail Replacement
• About AVST – An introduction to AVST and CallXpress 8

CallXpress Ranked #1 Again

The Voice Report’s February 2009 National PBX Survey confirmed CallXpress as the primary voicemail system in use by its respondents.

Feb. 26, 2009 (Vol. 30, No. 5)
Source: Voice Report’s 2009 National PBX Survey

There are Four Ways to Play Voice Messages on a BlackBerry

There are four basic ways to access a voice message on a BlackBerry device:

1. Play message attachments sent using the BlackBerry Enterprise Server
2. Play message attachments sent using the BlackBerry Internet Service
3. Play the message through the telephone interface
4. Access the message through a web browser and e-mail web application

CallXpress can support any or all of these message access technologies for BlackBerry users.

1. Play message attachments sent using the BlackBerry Enterprise Server – Some devices are capable of accessing and playing voice messages that are sent to the device as e-mail attachments (only the most recent versions of the BlackBerry devices, see list below).  If the user’s device supports opening and playing wave file e-mail attachments ad the BlackBerry Enterprise Server supports the correct type of attachment (requires version 4.1, SP 2 or higher), users can play the message directly on their device. Keep in mind, unlike some other mobile devices, BlackBerry devices do not automatically download the e-mail file attachments. They remain on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server until the user goes to access them. This can lead to some delay in playing the messages.The following BlackBerry devices support playing wave file e-mail attachments:

   BlackBerry 8130
   BlackBerry 8310
   BlackBerry 8320 running software 4.2.2 or later
   BlackBerry 8830 World Edition
   BlackBerry Curve 8300
   BlackBerry Pearl 8100
   BlackBerry Pearl 8120

     Read more

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