Siemens Enterprise Launches New OpenScape UC

By Richard Martin

Continuing to broaden its portfolio of enterprise unified communications systems, Siemens Enterprise Communications released the new 4.0 version of its OpenScape Voice platform. Designed to give medium-sized and large enterprises a complete bundled voice platform, OS Voice V4 includes two new feature sets: OpenScape Branch, a low-cost offering for companies with multiple branch offices, and OpenScape Concierge, which the company describes as “the industry’s first true unified communications (UC) Attendant Console application.”

Extending UC beyond the desktop OpenScape Concierge is designed to give receptionists and phone-answerers capabilities like the ability to see colleagues’ status and availability in real time. OS Branch, meanwhile, provides businesses with a single portal from which multiple branch-office voice-and-messaging systems can be managed. OS Branch uses a SIP proxy plus a session border controller for local SIP trunk connections.

Eve Aretakis, SEC’s executive vice president of voice and application platforms, said in a statement that business customers in financial services and retail, who operate multiple satellite offices, “are looking for ways to upgrade legacy systems to enterprise class, open, IP-based software solutions to improve business processes and stay competitive in the marketplace.”

The business communications division of German electronics giant Siemens AG (SI), Siemens Enterprise Communications, has announced a series of partnerships and initiatives to extend its market reach. Last month Siemens said it will integrate Polycom’s (PLCM) personal and room-based telepresence, high-definition video conferencing and desktop video collaboration applications into the OpenScape environment, available to enterprises via Siemens’ network of channel partners.

The companies said that the Polycom RMX series conference bridges and HDX video endpoints will work seamlessly with the OpenScape Unified Communications Server, which takes advantage of industry standards such as SIP and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to help ease integration.