The HiPath OpenOffice device is aimed at companies with between 20 and 150 users and is sold for $270 (200 euros) per seat, said Martin Northend, director of portfolio marketing for SME at Siemens Enterprise Comms in the UK.
It bears the suffix ME for Medium Edition, and Northend said both an LE and SE are under consideration for larger and smaller deployments, but there is no definition as to what they’ll look like or which will come first. He said there is even the possibility of the high-end version going onto a blade for use in data center environments.
Northend said there are three constituent software elements in the appliance. First is OpenScape Office, which is the collaboration platform, then there is the HiPath 3000 IP PBX version 7.0, which has the ability to extend its functionality out to mobile phones, and third is a part called Connectivity, which comprises a router and a firewall with the ability to enforce QoS settings, he said.
From the user’s point of view, interaction with the device is via a software client called myPortal on a laptop. It is there that calls can be initiated, and IM and SMS messages sent.
From the perspective of the IT department, Northend said: A lot of the development budget for this product went on a web-based management capability, with things like wizards to guide them through installation and so on. This is partly to meet the requirements of the companies acquiring the box, but also those of Siemens’ channel partners, who specifically requested low-maintenance, easy-install and easy-service functionality. The web management console also allows a company to add, configure, and manage up to 10 of Siemens’ WiFi access points for inclusion into the UC infrastructure.
Like all UC offerings, the device integrates with an email client on the user’s desktop, with the product selected being, not surprisingly, Microsoft Office. This enables features such as presence, whereby HiPath OpenOffice can consult someone’s Outlook calendar and see they’re busy in a meeting, rerouting an incoming call according to a predetermined profile (forward to voicemail, route to their mobile).
Northend said there are various flavors of mobile phone integration in the system. One is where both your fixed and you mobile handset ring at the same time when you get an incoming call, and for outbound ones you can dial into the PBX on the appliance to get a dial tone, he said. This way of doing things can be further enhanced on Nokia smart phones, which can take a client for full integration with the PBX.
He said another way is for people who work regularly from home, in which case they can use a soft client on their home machine or laptop, or else a deskphone at home, behind a VPN and router. Then for occasional home workers, we have a feature on the appliance called Call Me, which enables then to set rerouting to their home numbers before they leave the office, as well as setting up outbound calls from their home to go through the HiPath, which means the call will appear to the receiving party to come from the office number, and of course it won’t show up on the caller’s home phone bill, he said.
Our View
Various camps are forming among IP PBX vendors now that Microsoft has formally launched the Office Communications Server (OCS). There are those who are working directly with Microsoft, integrating OCS into offerings of theirs, of whom Nortel, Mitel, and Shoretel are the most obvious examples. At the other extreme is Cisco, which not only wants to sell a customer everything itself, but one gets the impression only interoperates with Microsoft because the customers demand it.
Then there are companies in the middle like Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent, which interoperate with OCS to provide break-in and break-out. As well as integrating with Outlook and Active Directory, they also have their own collaboration technology to offer.
The latest appliance from Siemens will compete with boxes based on OCS and with Cisco offerings. It will probably enjoy success in the vendor’s traditional strong markets like Germany and the UK. In the US, it will come up against sturdy competitors out of Asia like Panasonic, not to mention Cisco’s low-end UC-in-a-box. Interestingly, Northend said Siemens is still evaluating whether to launch the product in APAC.
