Overview

IP telephony transmits voice communications over the network using open, standards-based Internet Protocol.

It provides a way for you to extend consistent voice communications services to all your employees in their workspaces – on the main campus, at branch offices, remote, or mobile.

Our partner company Cisco offers the IP telephony solutions are an integral part of Cisco Unified Communications, which unify voice, video, data, and mobile applications on fixed and mobile networks. Your employees can tack with each other using almost any media, device, or operating system

Using your network as the platform, your organization can gain the inherent benefits of a converged network for transport and interconnection. IP telephony makes it easier to:

• Provide highly secure, reliable, scalable communications that take advantage of your LAN and WAN
• Improve employee flexibility and productivity with the full range of Cisco Unified Communications and third-party applications
• Take advantage of a wide range of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based capabilities

Cisco Architecture for Voice, Video, and Integrated Data (Cisco AVVID) solutions enable you to

• Deploy IP-enabled business applications
• Implement a standards-based open architecture
• Migrate to a converged network in your own time frame

Cisco AVVID enables you to move from maintaining a separate data network and a closed, proprietary voice PBX system to maintaining one open and standards-based converged network for all your data, voice, and video needs.

The following list gives some voice and video applications in the application layer of Cisco AVVID:

• Cisco Unity—The Cisco Unity messaging application provides voice-messaging to enterprise communications.
• Video—IP-TV and IP-video conferencing products enable distance learning and workgroup collaboration.
• Cisco IP IVR—As an IP-powered interactive voice response (IVR) solution, Cisco IP IVR combined with Cisco IP AutoAttendant, provides an open and feature-rich foundation for delivering IVR solutions over an IP network.
• Cisco WebAttendant—This flexible and scalable application replaces the traditional PBX manual attendant console.
• Cisco IP SoftPhone—The Cisco IP SoftPhone, a software, computer-based phone, provides communication capabilities that increase efficiency and promote collaboration.
• Personal Assistant—Personal Assistant selectively handles calls and helps you make outgoing calls. Personal Assistant provides rule-based call routing, speech-enabled directory dialing, voice mail browsing, and simple ad-hoc conferencing.

Cisco CallManager, a software-only call-processing application, distributes calls and features; and clusters phones, regions, groups, etc., over an IP network; allowing scalability to 10,000 users and triple call processing redundancy.

Cisco CallManager provides signaling and call control services to Cisco-integrated applications, as well as third-party applications.