UM vs VM license

[jcarr]

I'm a bit confused about Unified vs Voice Messaging licensing. As I understand it, VM includes Exchange, but does not permit access to the message store by an e-mail client (Outlook); only phone access is allowed. UM, OTOH, includes Exchange and allows access both by Outlook/VMO and through a telephone interface.

But I already have many Exchange licenses for email usage, independent of Unity. If I add UM to that message store, it seems like I'm buying the Exchange license twice. Can I buy just a VM license, use the existing Exchange message store and use Outlook/VMO? Conversly, could one buy a UM license alone and use that as a complete Exchange system without buying any additional Microsoft licenses?

[kechambe]

Regardless of the version of Unity you buy, we ship a copy of Exchange 5.5 Standard, Exchange 2000 Standard and Exchange 2000 Enterprise. We have a funky agreement with Microsoft which allows us to do this. We don't actually pay for each copy and then pass the cost off to the customers.

We don't ship **any** CAL's however. So, regardless of the version of Unity you buy, you are not licensed to have outlook access to mailboxes.

Basically you’re not buying anything twice.

Keith

[jcarr]

I currently have UM licenses, but for a variety of electro-political reasons, we have not integrated this with our Exchange e-mail system. Unity Exchange 2000 runs in a separate forest & domain. Outlook, of course, allows only a single MAPI Exchange server and that's our corporate Exchange server. A few of us use POP to retrieve our Unity messages from the Unity Exchange server and WMP to play the .wav enclosures. A lame solution in that it doesn't stream the audio and we can't reply, etc, but it shows the potential of UM. VMO doesn't work here, since the only access to the Unity message store is POP3.

Question is, do I need a UM license to access the Unity message store with POP(realizing that I'm receiving only a fraction of the value of the UM product), or could I do this with just a VM license?

I also found the VMI interface, but I gues that is yet another license over and above the UM license. In any case, I get an error when the applet tries to run. I suppose this is because I don't have any VMI licenses. If so, could I buy just sufficient VMI licenses for users actually using VMI (I have 300 UM licenses but most would probably not use VMI)?

One more question. Since we are not really using UM, if I need to expand beyond my current 300 clients, could I start buying VM licenses and have a mix of VM & UM licenses on the same server?

[lindborg]

According to the agreement with Microsoft, if you have VM only liceneses the ONLY way you can get at messages in those mailboxes in Exchange is over the phone or via the seperately licensed VMI. Period. If you want any other desktop access (POP3/IMAP/Outlook/etc...) it requires UM.

And no, you can't mix VM and UM licenses on the same Unity server - they only allow all UM or all VM on a single box. You'd need a seperate Unity server for the VM users.

[jcarr]

that clears up that part, but there is still a question on VMI. How many VMI licenses would I need to buy? I have 300 UM licenses. If, say, 100 people would POTENTIALLY use VMI and of those, say, 10 concurrently, how many VMI licenses would I need? 300? 100? 10? some other number? If the answer is < 300, do I somehow assign the VMI access privilige to selected users so they can use it but others can not? How does this work?

I've seen references to handling VMI differently in Unity 4.0. How will that work?

[lindborg]

VMI is licensed per user, not per session (i.e. you'd need a VMI license for each person you wanted to have access to it). The access to VMI is determined with a Class of Service setting so you'd assign users that had VMI access to a COS with it turned on.

No changes in licensing for VMI in 4.0 although the interface is going to change quite a bit (for the better). What is now known as "AA" and "VMI" will be rolled into one interface. It'll still have two parts for personal administration and inbox access... the personal assistant is not licensed but you can still control access to it on a per user basis as you can today with AA. The inbox view will be licensed just as VMI is today.

[jcarr]

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