The UM RFP embodies Leagles' goal to enhance message management for staff and client communications both in and out of the office. By giving mobile professionals access to e-mail, voicemail and fax, Leagles can deliver relevant information to clients and employees regardless of their location. The RFP also detailed a number of objectives to achieve the goal, which became the grading criteria.
Each vendor was asked to detail the message-management features and functionality of its product. This category included the TTS (text-to-speech) functions of UM servers that let end users manage their messages from a TUI (telephone user interface). Speech commands let mobile professionals access a variety of tasks from any telephone (wireless or wired). With a TUI, users can access e-mail, fax, voicemail, contact lists and calendars. And in the near future such access may also drive business applications to wireless phones. It was interesting to note that both Interactive Intelligence and Cisco provide a rich set of TTS features with only slight differences between them.
Message-management information also included descriptions of AA (autoattendant) and IVR (interactive voice response) features. AA provides DID (direct inward dial), DNAS (dialed number authentication service), and ASR (automatic speech recognition) for caller ID. DID lets callers ring an internal telephone extension without needing an operator; DNAS enables authorization of a connection attempt based on the number dialed, such as an 800 number. IVR provides callers with voice-menu trees for call routing. Interactive's IVR is built into Communité; Cisco requires an add-on product.
With the mobile professional in mind, we required vendors to supply a Web-browser interface. Both Interactive and Cisco went one step further by providing SSL access. Also, both had strategies for configuring filters and notifications to let you route critical messages to remote users in real time while relegating noncritical messages to voicemail.
The RFP also required products to support SIP to facilitate call management in the enterprise and reduce the overhead for adds and moves. With SIP phones, users can register their locations in the office or on a remote cellular device to receive calls (see "The Benefits of SIP," below). We also looked at how each vendor provides a single point of management and administration for all message types and leverages current IT infrastructure elements, such as IP PBXs, directories, and e-mail and fax servers.
Both vendors provide standards-based, IP-enabled products, letting an enterprise choose a best-of-breed UM package that fits with site-specific requirements and resources. Otherwise, you may be limited to a single-vendor approach that's an outgrowth of the legacy PBX, using proprietary protocols and vendor-supplied phone sets.
We asked each vendor for its best solution to replace Leagles' legacy PBX. Both Interactive and Cisco gave us their next-generation UM switches that provide PBX and telephone-switching capabilities in a standard PC server. Interactive went with its Customer Interaction Center, or CIC. CIC is an "all-in-one," software-based contact center that includes all the functionality of a PBX and also supports UM. But note that Interactive's bid is based on the stand-alone version of Communité, not the product that ships with CIC. The UM product bundled with the CIC is not as feature-rich as the stand-alone Communité. Cisco recommended CallManager, its software-based call-processing application that ships on a Cisco Media Convergence Server.
Finally, to maintain low costs while satisfying all RFP requirements, we asked each vendor to estimate the cost of UM per 200 users. Interactive logged in with the lowest price: $283 per user compared with Cisco's $407. With the low bid and high marks in each of our categories, Interactive gets our nod to supply Communité to Leagles.
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