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Genesys Adds Key Telephony Capabilities to Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS)
By Raju Shanbhag TMCnet Contributing Editor
Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) company, has announced that its Enterprise Telephony Server (GETS) will allow users of Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) ’07 to leverage telephony-enabled presence and control, in combination with new or existing telephony systems, to deliver advanced services without replacing their infrastructure.
Working with GETS, enterprises using OCS ’07 can get sophisticated call control and telephony-enabled presence capabilities irrespective of the underlying telephony infrastructure they are using.
The combination of Microsoft Office Communications Server with Genesys (News - Alert) GETS provides cost-effective, small footprint application that offers an immediate return-on-investment to the telephony-enable information workers. Consequently, GETS will reduce phone bills, cut the cost of conference calls by up to 25 percent, and extend the life of existing PBX
equipment.
The announcement is part of Genesys’ continuous efforts to make it easier for enterprises to link the phone and the PC without taking a “rip and replace” approach to their existing infrastructure. The announcement comes at a time when Microsoft (News - Alert) has dispatched the first shipments of OCS. GETS can be deployed in multi-site, heterogeneous environments with interoperability across 25 TDM
and IP-PBX (News - Alert) platform vendors and it is the only telephony solution that supports over 100 industry standard switches.
“Microsoft is a key Genesys partner, and the combination of OCS and GETS allows us to continue extending our reach beyond the contact center, while also adding value and unique capabilities for Microsoft Office Communicator users,” Paul Lang, vice president of product management at Genesys, said.
Genesys GETS software adds or enhances several key features of Microsoft Office Communicator and Office Communications Server, according to Lang. The key features include smart transfer, ability to detect “In a call” presence status regardless of what generation PBX users are connected to, telephony integration with Microsoft SmartTags allows users to dial contacts by clicking their name in any Microsoft Office Application, Multi-line Control and selection, and telephony controls, including ad-hoc conference calls.
Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.



