Unified comms competition increases

Cisco and Nortel both release updates to their core unified communications architectures

Competition in the unified communications sector has intensified after both Cisco and Nortel released updates to their core unified communications architectures at the spring VoiceCon conference in Orlando, Florida. Cisco updated its system to version 6.0, also changing its product name to Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM) 6.0.

Charles Stanley Stockbrockers' IT manager, Mark Smith, who is currently trialling the system, said, "It may not be the cheapest, but it works." Smith also points out that the system, as delivered on Cisco's turnkey appliance, called Media Convergence Server (MCS), performs better than when run installed on a Windows Server-based system. "There's a lot of differences [in this version] on the back end, which makes it more resilient", he added.

Cisco's solutions marketing vice president, Rick Moran, said that although there were 81 changes in this version, the focus was on three main areas: mobility, SMBs and collaboration. The mobility enhancements concentrate on delivering the same user experience whichever device they happen to be using at the time. Technology acquired from Cisco's purchase of mobile collaboration Orative Corporation last year has been re-branded Cisco Unified Mobile Communicator (UMC). UMC is a client/server package that will support Windows devices later, but for now is limited to Symbian devices. It allows mobile-to-desk voice transfer and will give users a single business number, single voicemail and a single call log, while also allowing users to check on the presence status of everybody in the firm's call directory. The upgraded collaboration features include Exchange and Outlook integration and Cisco Unified MeetingPlace conference alerts.

Also at VoiceCon, Nortel Networks, Cisco's competitor in the unified comms market, announced upgraded versions of its competing technology. Nortel's IP Telephony system, the Communication Server (CS) 1000, has an upgraded architecture able to run on off-the-shelf kit from IBM. A new version of Nortel's Multimedia Communication Server (MCS) 5100 was announced, which Nortel said would now run on Linux-based IBM servers. Nortel also introduced two new Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) systems, the entry-level 2500 series and the 4500 series. Both have Power over Ethernet, and Nortel's split multi-link trunking (Split-MLT) for improved resiliency. Finally, Nortel released Unified Messaging (UM) 2000, a carrier-grade system enabling voicemail, fax, email to be accessed via common email applications, with support for a million users.