Unison Brings Harmony to Unified Communications - Server, Part 2
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Page 3 of 5 )
The server covers all of the communications bases and offers an array of capabilities, such as:
- IP PBX: Call center-class IP-PBX built in, with patented scaling technology
- Directory/Contacts: LDAP with global, departmental and personal address books
- E-Mail/E-Mail Security: High-performance e-mail server with anti-virus and anti-spam built in
- Instant Messaging: Integrated XMPP-based instant message and presence server
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Calendar Server: Advanced CalDAV-based calendaring with group scheduling
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Control Panel: A single administrative control application for corporate directory, telephone, e-mail and other features.
Arguably, the most important consideration here is that all of those
features require only a single server and are all preintegrated to
work with each other using a single management console. That should
reduce deployment time and maintenance chores significantly, not to
mention that initial deployment costs would be much lower than
competitive solutions.
While Unison Server does cover the basics quite well, there is room for
improvement. For example, the product does not offer support or
integration for desktop videoconferencing solutions, a capability that
is getting more and more important. In addition, administrators will
find that support for Active Directory is limited; the product relies
on LDAP instead. Active Directory support (beyond just LDAP
synchronization) could speed up installation and simplify management
much more.
Support for Skype would be a welcome feature for small
businesses, many of which are considering the cost savings offered by
Skype’s business VOIP services. The server does not offer a Web client
either; seeing support for something akin to Microsoft’s OWA (Outlook Web
Access) could make the product very suitable for traveling
workers.
Currently, Unison Server only supports Unison’s proprietary
“fat” client, which is available for Windows and Ubuntu; there is no
Mac support at this time.
The product offers very limited support for mobile devices (or PDAs)
and their related server products, such as GOOD messaging and
BlackBerry Enterprise Server. A savvy integrator could rig something up
to overcome that problem by using POP e-mail or IMAP integration. The
lack of PDA support extends to calendaring also. Perhaps Unison could
consider setting up synchronization with Google’s calendar service (or
one of the other hosted calendars) to overcome that problem.
