VOIP to Be Used for Emergency Notifications

VOIP to Be Used for Emergency Notifications
Organizations look to unified communications for efficiency and emergency preparedness.Unified communications technology is getting serious consideration in the wake of recent school shooting incidents. "It's just another way of trying to get a message out to students. When something bad happens like the Virginia Tech [shooting], you have to try to get to students any way you can," said Steve Stempien, director of information services at Adrian College. The technology also has more prosaic, albeit important, uses. Admissions counselors at the college intend to use the new Mobile Call Manager as a way to "stay in communication with prospective students," said Stempien. This and other functionalities are part of a package that ShoreTel is introducing Nov. 12 as it tries to jump on the unified communications bandwagon. Among the grab bag of new features and product offerings are support in its call management software for BlackBerrys, a pair of new IP phones and three new IP PBX switches aimed primarily at international markets. ShoreTel also inked a pact with Syntellect to resell its high-end call center system with its IP PBXes. ShoreTel extended its desktop call handling client to mobile devices, starting with the BlackBerry, in the new ShoreWare Mobile Call Manager. "It allows you to control your corporate extension from your mobile phone," said Steve Timmerman, vice president of marketing for Shoretel. From their BlackBerrys, users can view the number of corporate voice mail messages they have, view their call history, assign their corporate extension to any phone they want and perform a variety of corporate desktop phone functions. ShoreTel intends to add support in later releases for other PDAs (personal digital assistants), including Nokia mobile phones and the Motorola Razr, as well as to Windows Mobile devices, Timmerman said.Source: eweek.com