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.
Interactive Intelligence's Communité was our top pick thanks to its integration with traditional TDM-based and IP-enabled PBXs and its ability to leverage enterprise directories and e-mail servers. Besides supplying the lowest bid, it delivered the highest return on features for message management and remote access.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
