Telephony with IBM Sametime software

A social business can be more nimble—and save on telephony expenses—when telephony managers increase the synergy between IT and telephony infrastructures to provide high-quality cost-effective voice and video services. Telephony integration into your unified communications and collaboration environment can make it easy for users to choose the tools most appropriate for the task at hand. And when your computer is your phone you can save on telephony expenses, too.

Telephony integration and telephony features provided by IBM Sametime® software help make Sametime software your platform for next-generation communication services. Sametime software integrates with a range of email and productivity applications to provide you with one-click access to Sametime services, including telephony capabilities.

New features in Sametime 8.5.2 software enhance telephony support:

• The standards-based (STUN, TURN, ICE) NAT (Network Address Translation) traversal enables audio and video usage to transcend an organization's firewalls, with the same enterprise class security standards.

• New Bandwidth Manager makes rich media collaboration (with audio/video) feasible by helping maintain network quality of service for mission critical applications.

• The newly-enhanced web browser-based online meetings now include the same built-in or third-party audio and video services as in a rich client meeting.

• Smartphone users have more options. Sametime software provides browser-based participation in online meetings from iPad and Android tablets, while the RIM BlackBerry meeting application enables BlackBerry smartphone users. The Sametime client and Sametime Unified Telephony dialer on Apple iOS and Google Android devices includes presence and instant messaging; background notifications; text to speech; and the ability to initiate voice calls with your Sametime Unified Telephony number—as well as control call routing preferences and device selection on the fly. (The iOS and Android support creates more device endpoints capable of receiving and transmitting calls from your one unified phone number, both over a cellular or wi-fi network.) See Sametime mobility page for screenshots.

• Geographically-distributed failover support for the Sametime Telephony Control Server (TCS) helps provide high availability of telephony services.

• Support for dual adaptors into a single Sametime infrastructure provides improved flexibility for integrating audio conferencing and enterprise video.

• Virtualization of IBM Sametime Unified Telephony for both the Telephony Application Server (TAS) and TCS servers allows companies to take advantage of consolidated IT infrastructure and hosted environments, which helps to reduce operating and administration costs, while increasing resource utilization.

IBM Sametime Unified Telephony Lite Client software
The new IBM Sametime Unified Telephony Lite Client license provides telephony managers an excellent entry point to step into unified communications and the full Sametime Unified Telephony experience with minimal requirements beyond your existing Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) infrastructure. By turning the Sametime Connect client into a standards-based SIP softphone:

• Users can place and receive calls to external phone numbers, video conferencing systems or video conferencing endpoints from their desktop.
• You can promote the utilization of video conferencing systems with an easy way to dial into a system and engage in a compelling video conference.
• With training, employees can use VoiP, eliminating the need for desk phone expenditures, home office lines, and long distance and cellular long distance and roaming charges, including international roaming charges. As adoption spreads, costs continue to decline, allowing you to redirect budget to other projects.

IBM Sametime Unified Telephony software
The optional IBM Sametime Unified Telephony software can unify your communications and collaboration capabilities now without replacing your PBX system. Sametime Unified Telephony software provides this support:

• Provides users with a consistent communications experience, with a single unified phone number that can reach any device; telephony presence; incoming call management; click-to-call, click-to-conference; and softphone functions.
• Provides telephony managers a middleware layer to enable telephony integration with multiple PBX back ends to support your existing infrastructure. For organizations with complex telephony infrastructures, it can lower your telephony costs without having to invest in expensive IP-PBX migrations.

Even if you have already consolidated on a single telephony vendor, Sametime Unified Telephony software can help reduce port and softphone fees and use less expensive IP hard phones.

Enterprises also have the option of integrating their existing telephony infrastructure into Sametime software through plug-ins provided by their telephony vendor.

Sametime edition comparison: Telephony integration and telephony features
Sametime software is available in multiple editions to support the needs of your enterprise from the small office to the multinational conglomerate.

Some voice functionality and call controls are provided in IBM Sametime Standard software and in IBM Sametime Advanced software, which includes Sametime Standard features.

Additional capabilities can be provided by the addition of IBM Business Partner telephony plug-ins. IBM Sametime Unified Telephony software provides integrated telephony capabilities.

The table below indicates which voice services are available under three different approaches.

*   Varies with specific IBM Business Partner offerings.
**  IBM Business Partner-provided bridge
*** Applies for Sametime to Sametime software user only