Unison's UC Solution Brings VoIP, IP-PBX with Digium, Cisco Gateways Support

In a sign of how attractive cost-saving communications technologies have grown in this slower economy, a Manhattan-based group’s new, free UC solution reportedly now supports SIP gateways from the company that created and develops Asterisk, the popular open source telephony platform, and from the world’s largest maker of computer networking gear.

 

Officials at Unison Technologies said today that their ad-supported solution, called “Unison,” now supports gateways from Digium Inc., the Hunstville, Alabama-based Asterisk company, and from Cisco Systems Inc. The SIP-based Unison UC server is designed to allow cost-conscious SMBs to replace an old PBX telephone system while keeping existing lines and numbers.

 

According to Igor Balk (News - Alert), chief technical officer at Unison, extending the solution to traditional telephone lines as well as IP telephony will further broaden the appeal of the company’s free UC platform.

 

“For the relatively low cost of a Cisco or Digium (News - Alert) hardware gateway, any small or mid-sized business can now keep their existing lines, while at the same time upgrading to Unison unified communications,” Balk said. “It is a great way to move beyond legacy systems such as a proprietary, standalone PBX.”

 

As TMCnet Group Managing Editor Erik Linask reported, Unison integrates e-mail, IM, IP-PBX , calendar server, and LDAP directory capabilities into a single application. In addition to a basic cost benefit, that integration is expected to ease administration, Linask said, as all components are located on a single server and managed through the so-called “Unison Control Panel.”

 

“The call center-class IP PBX features all of the capabilities of most popular systems today: auto attendant, call control features, presence, call recording, ACD, call queues, voice mail, analog and IP phone support, mobility, unlimited extensions and DIDs, intelligent call routing, and more,” Linask writes.

 

The Unison UC platform is available for download here.

 

Support on platforms from Digium – whose Asterisk appliance is shown at right – and San Jose, California-based Cisco likely marks a major taking-off point for the Unison platform. The companies develop some of the most popular hardware gateways, which businesses use to keep their infrastructure while migrating to an IP-PBX system, bringing features such as such as click-to-call, voicemail-to-e-mail, and real-time call recording.

 

As Digium CEO Danny Windham told TMCnet’s Greg Galitzine (News - Alert) in an interview published today, the company is eyeing a number of new developments for the next year, including enhancements in the Asterisk project to expand functionality, improve international capabilities, and make it easier for developers to create and distribute applications based on Asterisk.

 

“The planned Q1 release of our business-class telephone system (known as Switchvox (News - Alert) SMB 4.0) will deliver a new ‘Web-aware’ unified communications experience — incorporating Web mashups with features such as voice-mail, chat, fixed-mobile convergence, and fax, into an easy-to-use IP PBX offering for small and medium sized businesses,” Windham said.

 

Officials at Unison say that because their platform integrates an IP-PBX system into Unison Server, it can power not only e-mail, instant messaging, and real-time presence, but also telephony. With connectivity to IP telephones, desktop softphones and mobile devices, Unison is being marketed as a complete replacement for both PBX systems, instant messaging services and legacy e-mail servers such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino.