Presence and Collaboration, Leading Telecom Manufacturers Address Employee Productivity

By Sandra M. Gustavsen

Analyst, Access Intelligence LLC

 

Leading manufacturers continue to develop Unified Communications solutions designed to improve business communication and productivity and help employees stay connected to colleagues and customers. Alcatel, Avaya, Cisco, Inter-Tel, Mitel (News - Alert), NEC, Nortel and Siemens are among the vendors offering applications that address secure, real-time telephony, presence and collaboration via a desktop PC, enabling workers to view the “device presence” of a colleagues’ availability - voice, email, web chat, fax, instant messaging or video – regardless of location, making the set up of collaborative conversations easy and efficient.

 

Among the newest “personal productivity” applications is Inter-Tel’s (News - Alert) Personal Communicator designed specifically for the new Inter-Tel 7000 SIP Softswitch. Users can easily manage voice and text communications and set up and view presence information on a desktop PC, Web portal, Web browser, e-mail client, PDA, or phone. Reach Me and Status boxes can be updated via any of the interfaces listed, or updated automatically according to routing rules, hot rules and event notifications - Microsoft Outlook Calendar integration enables automatic status updates according to meetings and other tasks defined in the calendar.

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Cisco Unified Personal Communicator is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for face-to-face communications that combines desktop applications, a telephone and the network to let employees search directories and "click to call" using voice and video. The Cisco Unified Presence Server collects user status information, such as the device a user is currently using (telephone, PC or video terminal for example), "aggregates" the presence information and publishes the information to Cisco IP phones, the Cisco Unified Personal Communicator and other applications such as Microsoft Live Communications Server (LCS).

 

TelecomTactics continues to expand its coverage of the latest productivity applications from basic PC-based call management to “presence collaboration portals” that add more advanced functionality such as Web and video conferencing, instant messaging and presence status. While applications from various vendors differ in level of functionality, the goal is to improve communication and customer satisfaction – for businesses both small and large.

 

Below is a sampling of the employee productivity applications currently on the market. Visit www.telecomtactics.com and the TelecomTactics CTI/Productivity Module for more solutions and full details.

 

 

Contact Sandra M. Gustavsen [email protected] or visit www.telecomtactics.com or www.telecomweb.com.