While wandering around VoiceCon recently, I was struck by how many different kinds of communications platforms are available for organizations, and many companies attempting to tackle unified communications must eventually find themselves in a multivendor environment needing "unified management". How does one administer and do "Moves, Adds, Changes and Deletes" (MACDs) under such conditions?
Fortunately, I ran into Unimax at the show, a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based, privately-held company specializing in unified voice administration applications. Their flagship product, 2nd Nature, replaces the native interfaces of your multi-vendor PBX, voice mail and other business systems with a single, easy-to-use administration tool. 2nd Nature can unify the management of MACDs, password resets (assisted and self-service), automated provisioning, automated voice mail list management, transaction auditing, reporting, and other things. Unimax' 2nd Nature also makes possible integration between your voice network and business systems such as Active Directory, HR, call accounting, E-911, and so forth. By concentrating such administrative abilities into a single point, companies can further reduce operational costs, strengthen security, increase visibility and control, and improve internal customer service.
At the show, Unimax "pre-announced" their release of 2nd Nature Version 6.8. This most recent version of 2nd Nature will have support for AVST's CallXpress and Cisco's Unity Connection. Version 6.8 also enhances existing compatibility with PBX and voicemail systems from Avaya, Cisco, and Nortel. For example, there's now compatibility with Avaya's Modular Messaging Version 5.0 and Cisco's UCM Version 6.1.3 and 7.0.1. Support will also be added for Nortel's 1200-series phone sets. It also enhances compatibility with Microsoft Active Directory, contains a few new workflow productivity enhancements, and other types of business systems will also be supported and enhanced in the new version. Hence, Unimax 2nd Nature is now compatible with systems from quite an array of vendors: Avaya, AVST, Cisco, Nortel, Aastra, Microsoft, and others.
Todd Remely, Director of Marketing at Unimax Systems, says, "In addition to having 2nd Nature support AVST's CallXpress, we're also partnering with AVST. Adding AVST and Cisco to what we're compatible with has come in response to industry demand. Enterprises and managed service providers now have a way to inexpensively unify and simplify administration of complex multi-vendor voice systems. In terms of cost reduction alone, 2nd Nature now not only offers multivendor visibility and management of PBX and voicemail systems, but customers can use their system to gain visibility and control and management of all those platforms. There's improved internal customer service, password resets are easy, security has been improved, and 2nd Nature now has a single sign-in. In this way password proliferation is kept under control, since there's easier password management now available."
Unimax' only competition are genuine native systems, the administration of which are still independent. But don't worry, Unimax' partners are helping to get the message out.
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