One of the more interesting and successful technological partnerships in recent years has been that of Iwatsu Voice Networks, a U.S. subsidiary of Tokyo-based Iwatsu Electric, and Esna Technologies (News - Alert), a unified communications solution company.

 

Recently Iwatsu and Esnatech announced the release of Version 2.0 of the Iwatsu Enterprise Suite, a combination of Iwatsu’s advanced IP PBX call control hardware and Esnatech’s innovative unified communications platform, Enterprise Communications Server version 4, from Esnatech’s Telephony Office-LinX Version 7.1.

 

Designed for small- and medium sized businesses (SMBs), the Iwatsu Enterprise Suite Version 2.0 seamlessly unifies telephony, mobility, messaging, and enterprise presence to allow SMB companies to migrate from typical email inbox responses to proactive real time live communications.

 

The potent combination of Esnatech’s application server with the Iwatsu IP telephony system, the Iwatsu Enterprise Suite Version 2.0 offers such unified communication applications such as unified messaging, fixed-to-mobile convergence, enterprise presence, instant messaging, SMS messaging, a fax server, IVR (Interactive Voice Response), speech recognition and call routing in a simple single platform solution.

 

One of Yours Truly’s favorite Iwatsu people is Don Gant, a regular fixture at TMC’s (News - Alert) ITEXPOs, who has been with Iwatsu for 20 years and was recently named one of the “Top 100 Voices of IP Communications.” As Iwatsu Voice Systems’ Vice President of Channel Marketing and Business Development, Gant is in the perfect position to elucidate the many cutting-edge features of the new Enterprise Suite.

 

“The latest version of the Iwatsu Enterprise Suite combines in one integrated platform the productivity-enhancing aspects of UC and advanced call processing,” says Gant. “Merging voice, fax and speech through the Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) integration both provides flexibility in terms of deployment location and reduces the cost of hardware so that SMBs – particularly organizations from 25 to 500 users – can now cost-effectively compete with the kinds of communications solutions employed by the big Fortune 1000 companies.”

 

“The Suite supports Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Exchange 2007, MS Office 2007, and fax messaging over SIP, and users can work with any email/groupware environment as well as integrate any mobile phone device into the IP telephony infrastructure,” Gant continued.

 

Enterprise Communications Suite is also tightly integrates with IBM Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise, the Research in Motion (News - Alert) BlackBerry, Nokia devices, and Microsoft Windows Mobile devices. The system’s gateway server can be administered directly from an organization’s Microsoft Management Console or through Terminal Services over the Web. Users can be managed through Active Directory and Group Policy.

 

Despite such economical flexibility, the Iwatsu/Esna system supports all of the high availability and resiliency requirements companies one would expect from a top-notch business communications system.

 

Winning partnerships like that of Iwatsu and Esnatech make sense, since no one company need “re-invent the wheel”. By having each company specialize in what they do best, sophisticated, cost-effective solutions can now reach the market faster than ever before.