[August 7, 2000]

Active Voice Intros Unity Enterprise 2.4, New Version Includes Enhanced VoIP, Unlimited Unified Messaging Seats

Active Voice Corporation, a leader of unified messaging and computer telephony software solutions, announced that Unity Enterprise 2.4, the latest version of its award-winning true unified messaging solution for enterprise-level organizations, has been released to general availability for all customers.

"As the unified messaging market continues to gain prominence and Internet Protocol (IP) telephony solutions begin to take off, Active Voice is perfectly positioned to deliver powerful, next-generation communications systems that meet the needs of businesses of every size," says Ken Myer, Active Voice's executive vice president of sales and marketing. "With Unity Enterprise 2.4, we are proud to deliver a unified messaging solution especially designed to meet the unique requirements of large enterprises-superior reliability, advanced functionality, and simplified scalability. This new version of Unity Enterprise also provides additional integration with Cisco CallManager, which is crucial for our enterprise customers who are preparing for the migration to IP telephony and need a communications solution that works simultaneously with their current PBX system."

Unity Enterprise 2.4 integrates with CallManager 3.0 as a software-only application, resulting in a unified messaging solution that is significantly easier and more cost-effective to deploy. This pure software integration saves 20 percent or more in customer hardware costs. Unity Enterprise also provides dual switch support-working equally well with PBX or IP-based telephone systems, and in combined IP/PBX environments-to meet the needs of organizations that are beginning to converge their voice and data networks, or plan to do so in the future.

Unity Enterprise 2.4 also offers unlimited usage of ViewMail for Outlook, which gives subscribers the ability to access their voice, fax, and e-mail messages from their Microsoft Outlook Inbox. The enhanced fax module now offers up to 24-ports of fax capacity as well as server side rendering, which enables users to use a telephone to redirect e-mails along with attached files such as Word or Excel documents to any fax machine. Unity Enterprise 2.4 supports additional PCI voice boards and delivers enhanced networking and fax server capability.

Corresponding with the release of Unity Enterprise 2.4, Active Voice introduced the Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 (Voicemail Runtime Edition). This specially branded and licensed edition of Exchange-the result of an agreement pioneered by Active Voice-allows Unity Enterprise telephone-only users to access their voice messages stored in the Exchange database, without a Microsoft Client Access License (CAL). Organizations that opt to run Unity Enterprise 2.4 on Exchange Server 5.5 (Voicemail Runtime Edition) will not need CALs for staff members who retrieve their messages exclusively over the telephone, such as factory floor personnel who do not have a PC.

Every voice, fax, and e-mail message is sent to the Microsoft Outlook Inbox, where users can access and manage them using a PC, any telephone, or the Internet. E-mails are read to users via text-to-speech (TTS). Users can reply to any e-mail with a voice message that is attached as a WAV file. Built from the ground up using native 32-bit NT services, Unity Enterprise's server architecture features a single directory, single message store, and single point of administration. This minimizes installation, administration, and support costs -- making life easier for system administrators and lowering an organization's total cost of ownership. Unity supports Microsoft's Windows and Exchange 2000, and features localizations in Australian English, Dutch, French, German, and United Kingdom English.

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