We dispatched an RFP seeking an IP-enabled unified-messaging system that supports IP PBXs and can carry both voice and data, taking full advantage of our fictional law-research firm's substantial investment in its IP infrastructure. With these minimal requirements, the world was at our door (see "Plugging the Communications Time Drain,"). But we also wanted to minimize the impact on the network and improve call control and management. The answer: Session Initiation Protocol.
The SIP filter reduced the number of respondents to a handful. Although both Alcatel and Avaya replied to our RFP, Avaya's solution didn't support SIP, and Alcatel's solution won't be available until later this year. This left Interactive Intelligence's Communité and Cisco Systems' Unity to battle it out.
We put Communité and Unity side by side and looked at each product's ability to manage a single UM store as well as provide functionality for mobile professionals. We also scrutinized their management capabilities and support for LDAP, MIME, SMTP, VPIM and other open standards that would help the systems integrate with various enterprise resources.
When the dust settled, Interactive Intelligence's Communité got our bid. Communité provided the best value based on the per-user cost of UM, it provided the most features, and it received high marks for integration.
Our Scenario: This RFP evaluates TCP/IP-enabled unified-messaging products that support SIP for Legal Eagles LLC, aka Leagles.
Leagles provides legal research and information services to law professionals. Its mission is to offer high quality at a low cost. To that end, the company uses the latest technology to achieve high levels of efficiency and responsiveness to client needs nationwide.
Leagles has offices in Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. The San Francisco office is relocating to Oakland to take advantage of a more favorable business climate and to reduce operating costs. The new Oakland location provides QoS (quality of service) for voice and data on a Gigabit Ethernet (TCP/IP) backbone throughout the building with switched 100-Mbps network connections to every desktop. With plenty of headroom on the network, Leagles Oakland is investigating an IP-enabled UM product to combine digital voice and data on the same network.
Leagles Oakland is looking for a SIP-based solution to ride the next wave of Internet multimedia services. Once the surf gets stronger for VoIP on the Internet, SIP will put more intelligence in PDAs and wireless data appliances; that will improve mobility management and enable true multimedia sessions. Leagles Oakland, by cutting its teeth on this technology now, will be in a good position to increase its multimedia publishing efforts to a mobile work force and clients. Until then, providing VoIP with SIP on the corporate LAN should improve LAN-based call and session management.
After a successful implementation of UM in Oakland, Leagles will investigate it for Boston, Chicago, New York and Seattle. At that time, the company will sort out the operational differences between the offices. Although all locations have standardized on Captaris' RightFax, the West Coast prefers its Microsoft Exchange 2000 messaging service with Active Directory to the East Coast's Lotus Notes and Domino directory. We haven't figured out what Chicago is doing. No one has returned our calls. But the inventory indicates that it's some IMAP4-compliant mail server with an LDAP-compatible directory.
The Oakland move provides a good opportunity to investigate the costs of installing, maintaining and supporting UM. Plus, it will be nice to call the California office and have someone answer the phone: UM products have a "follow-me" feature that will pursue user devices--to court or to Starbucks.
Vital Stats
Leagles' Goals:
In a bid to gain an edge on its competitors in low-cost legal services and
maximize its billable hours, Leagles plans to:
- Consolidate message management for e-mail, voicemail and fax
- Enable mobile access to e-mail, voicemail and fax data
- Provide a single point of management and administration for all message types
- Leverage current IT infrastructure and applications?for example, directory,
e-mail and fax
- Maintain low costs per user
Leagles' people:
- 1,000 employees nationwide, 200 of them in the new Oakland office
- Mergers and acquisitions will result in 4,000 additional employees within five
years
- 10 percent of the work force is mobile at any given time, equipped with
cellular phones and/or wireless PDAs
Leagles' links:
- Upon the move to Oakland, the legacy PBX from the San Francisco office will be
upgraded to an IP PBX
- The data network will use a Gigabit Ethernet backbone with switched 100 Mbps
to desktops
- Internet data services will be upgraded to OC-3
- Intermediate devices on the network will operate at OSI Layer 3 through Layer
7 to provide QoS for VoIP and data
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