PSU VoIPHot topics at today's special-interest group meeting for the education industry (included K12 and higher ed.; about 40 people from 20-25 institutions attended)
- Organizations are plagued with deteriorating 7940s and 7960s--specifically, the hookswitches are wearing out. Cisco recommends proper care and cleaning of the IP phone.
- Wireless and mobility are at the top of everyone's list. Not much adoption of the 7920/7921 wireless IP phones. One university has deployed a small number of Vocera communications badges. (Click on the Hospitality guy. Remind anyone of Star Trek communicator badges?)
- People are implementing emergency notification with home-grown apps and Berbee Informacast (which Penn State has out in very limited deployment). Many want to do SMS paging (text messaging); PSUTXT is a working model. Cisco's IPICS may be a contender against Informacast.
- 911: all over the board. No wonderful solutions offered by anyone present; I wish this topic had gotten a lot more floor time.
- Voicemail: Interactive Intelligence's Messaging Interaction Center (was Communite) can do unified messaging with IMAP systems, not just Exchange. A competitor to Cisco Unity.
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