All,
We're currently looking at two vendors to replace our current voicemail system. Cisco Unity is one of the two products we're looking at.
Immediately, we're looking to replace voicemail for 3000 users in our home office. However, we'll be replacing the voicemail systems of our other offices as their current voicemail systems come off lease.
Currently, all offices receive their email from Exchange servers located in the home office.
What we're looking to do is provide voicemail only capabilities for 2800 users and unified messaging for another 200. We may, as time progresses, move more users over to unified.
From a design standpoint, from what I understand, we can:
1. Implement a single Unity server for unified messaging and implement another Unity server for the voicemail only users.
2. Implement a single Unity server. For those that are unified, point their Unity accounts to their primary Exchange inbox. For those users that are voicemail only, we can create an additional 2800 Exchange inboxes that the users cannot access through Outlook.
3. Go unified for all users.
Other than going unified for all users, our Active Directory and Exchange administrators are not excited about options #1 and #2. #1 seems like it'd be pain to manage as we would need additional servers, like a second Unity server, additional domain controllers, etc. #2 would require additional Exchange servers and it seems like it'd also be a pain to manage.
Am I missing something here? Are options #1 and #2 really our only options outside of going unified for all users?
Please let me know what you think. Thanks.
