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IBM Jams 3Com VCX Onto App Server |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Thursday, 26 October 2006 |
IBM and 3Com Corporation have begun deployments of their
promised scalable IP telephony solutions which integrate telephony along with core
business applications on a single server.
The IBM System i IP Telephony solution seeks to change the predominant
"appliance model" for IP telephony environments, which sees dedicated hardware
or servers bought to bear on the task of IP Telephony supply.
In its stead IBM has rolled up an "all-in-one"
business computing platform that is both server and VoIP system.
The idea is to make VoIP more accessible to a greater range
of businesses.
The companies already have a few sales under their belt with
Southern Californian college, The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising
(FIDM), on the system already.
"System i has proved itself as a reliable, secure
platform to run FIDM's business. We were evaluating IP telephony offerings from
other companies, but when we heard about the new System i IP telephony solution
we couldn't pass it up," says Roxanne Reynolds-Lair, CIO of FIDM.
"With our System i IP telephony solution, we expect to
save several thousand dollars per month, simplify our infrastructure, respond
to business recovery situations faster and, best of all, set the foundation for
FIDM's growth over the next decade."
Mark Shearer, general manager of IBM System i.said "the
exciting part of today's news is that whether you are familiar with the value
System i provides or not, you can't help but recognize the benefit of running
your entire business and your IP telephony simultaneously on a single system."
"System i IP telephony can support less than 100 to
thousands of phone users and our analysis shows that it can deliver a return on
investment in months, not years," he said.
Expected to be available in early November, the System i IP
Telephony Express Edition targets companies from 100-1,000 users and can be
added to new or existing System i platforms. A single system offering starts at
US$37,900 and a double system offering for high availability starts at US$51,900.
Solution availability motivated IBM to offer System i IP
Telephony Express Editions in a double system version - one to act as the
primary system and another correctly sized, configured and attractively priced
to serve as the back up system where the highest availability is required.
IBM says it chose 3Com as its IP telephony partner for
System i based on the two companies' common values of integration, ease-of-use,
reliability, scalability, security and support for open standards.
Using open standards such as Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP) creates a platform for innovation by enabling the 3Com VCX to be more
easily integrated with other applications running on the System i including
collaborative applications like Lotus Sametime and Domino as well as third
party applications.
Since announcing the project in April , IBM says it has had considerable interest from
it resellers and business partners who want to
exploit this integration.
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