Thursday, 26 October 2006

IBM, 3Com Team on IP Telephony

IBM and 3Com, have unveiled the IP telephony solution designed to run on a single system along with a customer's core business applications.

The IBM System i IP Telephony solution represents a shift from the current appliance model for IP telephony environments, which requires that customers dedicate one or more separate servers to support each function of the telephony suite call processing, messaging and conferencing, presenting integration and systems management challenges, especially for small and medium-sized businesses that may have limited IT resources. In contrast, the new IBM System i IP Telephony solution, based on IBM's 'all-in-one' business computing platform and 3Com's VCX systems, makes IP telephony accessible to businesses of all sizes and requirements by allowing them to implement a complete IP telephony solution on one powerful, yet easy-to-manage platform, IBM said.

System i IP Telephony offers flexible options for purchase and deployment. The System i IP Telephony Express Editions, expected to be available in early November 2006, are sized and priced for companies from 100-1,000 users and can be added to new or existing System i platforms. The importance of solution availability motivated IBM to offer System i IP Telephony Express Editions in both single and double system versions, one to act as the primary system and another correctly sized, configured and priced to serve as the back up system where the highest availability is required. A single system offering starts at USD 37,900 and a double system offering for high availability starts at USD 51,900.