Small, Medium and Mid Market Businesses Get Efficiency Boost from Cisco Unified Communications System

The Cisco Unified Communications system allows employees toexchange information, whether by email, voice or fax, via a widechoice of fixed and mobile communication devices. For time andresource challenged small, medium and mid market businesses, the CiscoUnified Communications system will provide a richer and moreintegrated communications experience. New features include the abilityto make video calls as easily as voice calls, and all via a highlysecure wireless connection on a laptop PC. Users can also communicateand collaborate with colleagues via one single and simple interface,bringing together telephone, email, instant messaging and voice, videoor web conferencing on their desktop. This allows increasing employeeand customer responsiveness whilst operating more efficiently and costeffectively.

The Cisco Unified Communications system is an extension to theBusiness Communications Solution announced in September 2005, whichprovides a whole offer of smart, simple and highly secure productsincluding integrated technologies, services, support and financing,all delivered through partner programmes and designed from the groundup for small, medium and mid market businesses.

Edzard Overbeek, Vice President, Commercial, European Markets,Cisco Systems said: "The Cisco Unified Communications system enablesorganisations to seamlessly integrate their communications system withtheir IT infrastructure. To help ensure small, medium and mid marketbusinesses can benefit from this, Cisco is helping companies evolvetheir technology through a clear path, or Smart Business Roadmap,allowing them to match solutions with their immediate and long-termbusiness needs, and invest for the future without the associated costor risk."

With the Cisco Smart Business Roadmap, customers can evolve theirtechnology in line with their business needs and implement the CiscoBusiness Communications Solution, based on the Smart BusinessCommunications Architecture. This architecture is the layer ofintelligence upon an open and extensible network designed to enablebusiness applications and services seamlessly interact to delivervoice and data in the right place, at the right time and in the rightformat. Small, medium and mid market organisations can learn moreabout the Cisco Smart Business Roadmap by completing the SmartBusiness Assessment tool, which can be found online atwww.cisco.com/youinc.

For SMBs, the Cisco Unified Communications system offersenhancements to Cisco Unified CallManager Express, a feature-rich,easy to set up call-processing system that now manages voice and videocommunications; Cisco Unity Express for unified messaging withenhanced scalability of up to 250 mailboxes, with new VoiceViewExpress that allows users to browse their voice mailbox from a PDA,email inbox or Cisco IP (Internet Protocol) phone display; new supportfor Cisco IP Communicator to enable secure IP-based voice and videocalls via a PC or laptop; and new support for Unified Video Advantagewhich provides customers with effective video telephony capabilities.

For mid market businesses, the Cisco Unified Communications systemoffers Cisco Unified CallManager, a comprehensive software-basedcall-processing system that manages IP-based communications; CiscoUnity messaging, which allows e-mail, voice, and fax messages to besent to one inbox; Cisco Unified MeetingPlace, a conferencing solutionthat integrates voice, video and web conferencing capabilities; andCisco Unified Contact Centre, which helps companies enhance callcentre efficiency.

Also new to the Cisco Unified Communications system is CiscoUnified Personal Communicator, which simplifies the way employeescommunicate by bridging the gap between stand-alone applications onthe desktop, telephone and network; the Cisco Unified Presence Server,which collects information about a user's status to determine the mosteffective method of communication; and support for Nokia dual modesmartphones that enable calls over both a public mobile GSM networkand a private wireless IP network. Incorporating open standards-basedSession Initiation Protocol (SIP) support for Cisco Unified IP phones,the overall Cisco Unified Communications system includes more than 30new products, enhanced management and administration as well assimplified pricing and services.

"Small and mid-sized businesses may differ across the variousindustries and regions of the world, but they all require operationalefficiency, customer responsiveness, cost containment and networksecurity," said Kneko Burney, President & Chief Strategist of CompassIntelligence, LLC. "A holistic, integrated and simple solution basedon industry open standards, rather than ad hoc point products, willenable them to plan a long term technology strategy, and create realbusiness value and competitive edge."

The demand from smaller businesses for effective communicationsshould not be underestimated. Recent research(1) by Cisco Systemsfound that IP telephony is set to boom for SMBs across Europe and thegrowing markets of Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. InEurope 60 percent of all firms surveyed said they are at least fairlyaware of the benefits of IP telephony, which rises to just overthree-quarters of all firms surveyed (76 percent) in the growingmarkets.

According to Nick van der Walt, IT manager of CBI Eastern Anstalt,an engineering and construction company for the petrochemicalindustry, based in Dubai, "Delivering data & voice communications hasnever been easier with Cisco. Reducing operating costs withoutcompromising quality no matter where you are has always been thebiggest hurdle to overcome, and with Cisco I can deliver on time,anywhere."

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Cisco, Cisco Systems, and the Cisco Systems logo are registeredtrademarks or trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliatesin the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarksmentioned in this document are the property of their respectiveowners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnershiprelationship between Cisco and any other company. This document isCisco Public Information.

(1) In October 2005, and January 2006, Cisco Systems, Inc.together with Coleman Parkes Research Limited conducted research onthe key business challenges and "must have" technologies for SMBs. Theresearch was conducted over two phases, for EU countries and growingcountries in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa. The results intotal covered 2,000 companies in 22 countries. For more information,please contact your local Cisco PR representative, or refer toNews@Cisco