AnywhereExchange testing Outlook Voice Access and VoIP telephony
New Zealand company ZeroOne (NZ) Limited is currently running a trial of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 combined Voice Over IP (VoIP) telephony, based on its hosted e-mail platform branded AnywhereExchange.
One of the new features being highlighted during the trial is the Outlook Voice Access, allowing users to access their Exchange mailbox over a phone call, through simple commands such as ” Today’s calendar”, “Reply” or “Call Meeting Organiser” and so on.
The service is scheduled to go live 1st April, when Number Portability starts in the country.
The platform is currently being tested with local ISP Compass, who will connect their VoIP services to AnywhereExchange’s softswitch, a SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) gateway. This way users will be able to answer phone calls to their numbers from anywhere in the world they are, but using a VoIP phone or a software client on any device, be it a computer or PDA.
If the phone call is not answered the call is diverteed to the AnywhereExchange platform, where Microsoft Exchange will answer the call and record a voicemail.
For the user this service a unified messaging experience, with all e-mails and voicemails stored in a single mailbox. These can be retrieved over the phone, from a client such as Microsoft Outlook or even from a PDA or smartphone synchronising to the mailbox. Any method currently supported by Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is available, including OWA, OMA, RPC-HTTP (MAPI), POP3, IMAP4 and the new method Outlook Voice Access (OVA).
Source and more info: geekzone