Improved Organizational Communications – Singlewire InformaCast and AXP

May 6th, 2010 | Author: Brad Parkel

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Introduction

Schools, hospitals, businesses, and government entities all recognize the criticality of timely and accurate communications in their organizations. Miscommunication and delayed announcements can affect productivity — and potentially safety. Communications must meet accuracy and timeliness standards even when the recipient is located at a remote location or branch office, as staff increasingly tends to be. And given the volumes of email that must be managed, important messages can easily be overlooked or ignored, mandating the need for a diverse set of communications methods to ensure receipt of important messages.

Industry Trends

Numerous industry trends influence organizational communications. With technology facilitating virtual workplaces and geographical independence, the number of remote locations is growing 11 percent every year. In fact, U.S. government statistics based on U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reports indicate that 84 percent of government personnel work away from the campus location. With this proliferation, and the pressing need to decrease operating expenses, there is now a trend toward centralization and “thin” remote locations. But because an increasing number of decision makers are remote, centralization must be achieved without compromising branch-office performance or availability.

The wide adoption of IP communications has resulted in many innovations. Organizations need to innovate and adapt to remain competitive and deliver advanced services available only with a voice-over-IP (VoIP) foundation, but they also need to maintain and enhance traditional communication services.

Cisco and Singlewire: Location-Independent IP Broadcast

Cisco continues to expand the value of the integrated services router and the breadth of functions it delivers with the Cisco^® Application Extension Platform (AXP), a network integrated services platform. Cisco AXP can help your organization host and deploy advanced applications, such as Singlewire^® Software’s InformaCast, onto your Cisco integrated services router. With the Singlewire InformaCast solution, your organization can reduce network complexity while saving on power and valuable space.

How It Works

The combination of Cisco AXP and Singlewire InformaCast addresses the need to consolidate in the remote locations of your organization. As depicted in Figures 1 and 2, Singlewire InformaCast is a software component that runs on the Cisco AXP module. The module, in either enhanced-network-module (NME) or advanced-integration-module (AIM) form, resides in the Cisco integrated services router. Supported with either Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM) or Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express (UCME), Singlewire InformaCast allows you to simultaneously push an audio stream or text message to multiple Cisco IP Phones, InformaCast compliant IP speakers by Atlas Sound, the InformaCast Desktop Notification System, or an overhead paging system. An administrator can select a prerecorded message or send a live broadcast through either a password-protected webpage or the IP Phone services menu. The administrator can design these messages to be sent within a single site or across the organization and affiliates.

Figure 1. Cisco AXP and Singlewire InformaCast Single-Site Example

In a single-site solution, the same integrated services router that houses the AXP module can also provide Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express for even more consolidation and solution simplification. IP endpoints, such as Cisco IP Phones and traditional endpoints such as analog-based public announcement systems can be supported with the Cisco AXP with Singlewire InformaCast solution. Multicast is used across the broadcast network.

Figure 2. Cisco AXP with Singlewire InformaCast Multisite Example

Like the single-site solution, multicast is used for communications between connected Cisco UCME sites with a variety of endpoint types.

Solution Highlights

The solution provides server consolidation and a decreased branch-office footprint:

• Lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) with less power consumption

• Provides enhanced productivity and better management

• Provides better network and application services integration

The solution offers numerous services with a flexible breadth of service types:

• You can create live, temporary, or prerecorded audio broadcasts and/or text broadcasts.

• The solution supports a variety of endpoints.

• You can administer the solution through a variety of flexible interfaces.

• You can filter access to message types and recipient groups by user.

• You can schedule messages to be sent at a preset time or on a recurring basis.

• You can configure the frequency of message playback.

The solution technology is proven:

• Founded on 20 years of innovation and validated by millions of deployments sites, Cisco integrated services routers provide multiservice routing, offering your company exceptional network agility, performance, and intelligence.

• The Singlewire InformaCast resume includes successful installations with Cisco Unified Communications Solutions across a variety of organizational sizes. Singlewire has achieved multiyear Cisco awards for U.S. Technology Excellence Partner of the Year for Unified Communications and Security.

Business Benefits

Compliance:

• Overhead paging often does not reach hearing-impaired employees, compromising their safety. Singlewire InformaCast helps ensure the safety of all employees by simultaneously sending an audible broadcast and text message to Cisco IP Phones and desktops. All employees have equal access to vital information about emergencies or network outages.

• In the wake of September 11 and hurricane Katrina, many government entities are mandating that facilities meet strict emergency notification guidelines. The Cisco AXP with Singlewire InformaCast solution provides streamlined packaging to meet these emerging regulations.

Total cost of ownership:

• The Cisco AXP with Singlewire InformaCast solution optimizes total cost of ownership (TCO) by centralizing management and the hosting environment for service for up to 1000 endpoints from a single integrated services router.

• The IP-based broadcast solution saves up to 70 percent of the cost of a traditional paging system, adds many more features, and eases management complexity with a variety of management interfaces. The solution takes advantage of existing voice and data network resources, requires no dedicated wiring, and often requires no need to wire or rewire speakers and amplifiers. The broadcast solution extends the investment already made in Cisco IP Phones beyond just dial tone.

Improved organization communications:

• Because the Singlewire InformaCast application provides the ability to send simultaneous, live audio to an IP phone, desktop, and inline IP speaker, or any preferred endpoint, it is a critical component of improved organizational communications.

• The combined Cisco and Singlewire solution provides a simplified, consolidated package for one-button messaging from a phone or one-click messaging from the desktop, and it allows you to send live, recorded, or scheduled messages.

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Tags: AXP, Cisco, Deployment, Emergency Communications, InformaCast, IP Paging, IP Speakers, Mass Notification |

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InformaCast v6.1.1 is available on AXP: messaging with reduced TCO

November 27th, 2009 | Author: admin

AXP

On November 11, Singlewire released InformaCast^® v6.1.1 on Cisco’s Application eXtenstion Platform (AXP). Cisco’s Integrated Services Router (ISR) combined with its Application eXtension Platform (AXP) allows businesses to cost-effectively meet their office communications and application integration needs by delivering data, voice, security, wireless LAN, switching, and video services on a single converged network and enabling hosting and integration of custom applications and network services. Cisco’s ISR and AXP have been instrumental in integrating networking infrastructure and reducing operational costs.

Singlewire’s InformaCast revolutionizes organization-wide communication. You can simultaneously send an audio stream and text messages to any combination of Cisco IP phones, InformaCast-compliant IP speakers, legacy paging systems, and PCs. With the push of a single button on the phone or a single click from a PC, a user can send a live, recorded, or scheduled broadcast to one or more paging groups.

InformaCast’s messaging and notification capabilities are numerous and constantly growing:

Create live, ad-hoc, or pre-recorded audio broadcasts and/or text broadcasts
Create paging groups using a variety of flexible means
Filter access to message types and recipient groups by user
Schedule messages to be sent at a preset time or on a recurring basis
Administer broadcasts from a secure web interface or IP phone
Broadcast multiple messages simultaneously to different paging groups
Use the Bell Scheduler’s calendar format for complex ringing environments such as schools, and schedule passing bells for an entire school district, modifying the bells as needed
Use the Talk and Listen feature and allow all recipients of a broadcast to take turns talking within the group by pressing a Talk softkey

With the release of InformaCast v6.1.1, Singlewire improved functionality:

Message priorities. You can now assign a priority level to messages, allowing you to control how messages will be played by recipient devices. For example, a principal’s message about a tornado in the area (with a priority setting of 1) would override the students’ daily announcements (with a priority level of 3).
Bulk IP speaker volume adjustment. This feature allows you to increase or decrease the volume of registered IP speakers. You can apply the volume adjustment to all registered speakers or to a subset of registered speakers.
Scripting. InformaCast can be configured to run a scripts after a broadcast has been sent or after it backs up its configuration.
SchoolMessenger/SOAP interaction. If you use the SchoolMessenger application, you can now create a message script that is attached to an InformaCast message. When the InformaCast message is broadcast, it will prompt SchoolMessenger’s application to execute a specific job. The SchoolMessenger application normally performs message delivery through phone calls, emails, and SMS.

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Tags: AXP, InformaCast, Mass Notification |

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Improved Organizational Communications – Singlewire InformaCast and AXP

InformaCast v6.1.1 is available on AXP: messaging with reduced TCO

IP Broadcast with AXP for Improved Organizational Communications