Cisco Unity & Microsoft Exchange 12

[masterson79]

I'm currently engaged in a project where the IT infrastructure architecture (voice and data) includes a Unified Messaging solution.

The Unified Messaging solution currently chosen is the Cisco Unity platform with an integrated Fax Server. All of the remaining data and voice communications products will be Cisco based. The voice communications will be IP Telephony supported, and this includes a CallManager 5.0 cluster deployment.

My question to all of you is: considering that the time frame for this architecture deployment is 1 ~ 2 years from now, what can you tell me regarding the Cisco Unity/CallManager and Microsoft Exchange 12 deployment and coexistence?

1. Will MS Exchange 12 be able to integrate with CallManager?

2. What kind of "coexistence" will Cisco Unity and MS Exchange 12 have?

Any other kind of comment on this will be very welcome.

[Ginger Dillon]

Hi -

Good questions, but I think more appropriately directed to Microsoft:

- For example, will Outlook voice access provide identified subscriber messaging; or message waiting lamp instructions to IP phones; or the ability to reply to voice messages with a compound message?

- Will the Exchange voice server remain online if Exchange server is down (Unity UMR support)?

I too, am planning how Exchange 12 will integrate with our AD forest and will look for Unity support within 60-days of Exchange 12 public general release. But we will be focusing more on how Exchange 12 will fit within our existing Exchange infrastructure (like getting to 64-bit architecture and design changes we'll need to make due to our investment in psts and Public folders). Thankfully, I know Unity will continue to provide our true voicemail integration while this work is going on :-)

Ginger

[massman]

We currently are examining Ex12 and Unity coexistence and making code changes to enable these products to work together. The main changes rely in Unity's current use of CDO and the lack of CDO support in Ex12. We're in the process of moving these functions to managed code (as is required). We're targeting basic interop (lab) in the summer timeframe, based on beta MSFT code.