VoIP innovator Quintum (News - Alert) Technologies today announced that Plan B, a German consultancy, deployed Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 and integrated it into their existing voice network using Quintum’s Tenor BX VoIP Multipath Switches. The Tenor BX supports ISDN BRI lines commonly found in German, according to the company.
Plan B chose to deploy Microsoft’s (News - Alert) unified communications (UC) solution within the organization, starting with the consultants, the most mobile employees, while minimizing the impact on the rest of the organization, according to Alan Dutton, head of Plan-B’s unified communications practice.
“Deploying Tenors with Microsoft OCS enabled our consultants to answer their office phones from anywhere in the world,” said Dutton. “In addition, it lets everyone see who is available, and provides a least cost routing solution, which has saved us thousands in telecommunications costs. It truly gave us a unified communications network.”
Plan B deployed a communications network with Microsoft Communicator and Microsoft Outlook running on the consultants’ individual laptops and PDAs, according to the company. Microsoft OCS 2007 and Microsoft Exchange run on servers in the company’s main office, and a Quintum BX Tenor gateway sits between the servers and the company’s PBX (News - Alert).
Now, consultants can use either Bluetooth headsets, USB connected headsets or the PC’s built-in microphone and speakers, with Communicator as the VoIP client. The Tenor allows voice traffic to move freely among the company’s LAN and its PBX to communicate with other employees, as well as the public switched telephone network (PSTN) for outside calls. Voice traffic can also move between the company’s LAN and the Internet via its router, according to Chuck Rutledge (News - Alert), vice president of marketing for Quintum.
“Plan B’s consultants faced many challenges with their communications network,” said Rutledge. “Tenors helped them easily bridge the gap between the PSTN, Microsoft OCS, and the multiple communications devices that the consultants rely on, while also improving productivity.”
Quintum, a subsidiary of Network Equipment Technologies (News - Alert), is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, worked closely with Microsoft on the UC initiative, by addressing several potential complications to OCS2007 deployments. Quintum developed its Unified Communications Proxy, designed to enable the Tenor gateways to provide “Any to Any” connectivity between Microsoft OCS environments and both legacy TDM voice equipment and standard SIP VoIP equipment.
Tim Gray is a Web Editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To see more of his articles, please visit Tim Gray’s columnist page.
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Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) | X | ISDN BRI is digital transmission using 2B+D or two B channels of 64,000 BPS for voice, data and video services and one D channel of 16,000 BPS for signaling over one-pair of twisted-pair telephone lin...more |
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) | X | SIP is the real-time communication protocol for VoIP. SIP is a signaling protocol for Internet conferencing, telephony, presence, events notification (emergency calling) and instant messaging.
SIP...more |
Voice over IP (VoIP) | X | A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more |
Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) | X | A PSTN number is a dialed call which is switched or connected via a CO switching system called a Class 5 End office or in SS7....more |
Internet Protocol (IP) | X | IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
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