Cisco CME External Voice Mail Options

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Cisco Unity voice mail
• Stonevoice voice mail
• Analog voice mail
• Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)-based voice mail

Cisco Unity Express (UE) voice mail was covered in Chapter 10, "Cisco IPC Express Integrated Voice Mail." It represents the integrated voice mail system recommended for use with Cisco CallManager Express (CME). However, you also have the option to deploy one of several external voice mail systems with Cisco CME. You might want to consider one of these voice mail options for your office in the following situations:

• If you are using a Cisco CME platform, such as the Cisco 1760-V, that does not support Cisco UE (although you could use a separate router to house Cisco UE as of release 2.0)
• If your Cisco CME router platform does not have any available slots to add the Cisco UE hardware
• If you require features such as unified messaging that are not yet available with Cisco UE
• If you want to deploy a centralized voice mail system to support multiple Cisco CME sites instead of a distributed voice mail option at each site
• If you have an existing legacy voice mail system that you want to continue to use

This chapter briefly reviews the external voice mail options available for use with Cisco CME. These options include the Cisco Unity voice mail system and several non-Cisco systems that integrate with Cisco CME via either H.323 voice over IP (VoIP) or an analog phone interface.