What version of Sametime is needed for Lotus Unified Communications?

With IBM's introduction of Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT) earlier this year, whenever Lotus speaks about unified communications they are doing so in terms of this new product.  Understandably so, IBM has invested a lot of time, effort and money into bringing an excellent product to market in SUT.  And when it comes to the limited money and air time it has to speak about unifiied communications, I understand why they focus almost exclusively on this product.  After all, SUT is an opportunity to sell new Lotus licenses, hardware and IBM services.

SUT is an excellent solution for unified communications, but it is not the only option for unified communications for a Lotus Notes shop.  Most of the major telephony vendors have created their own plug-ins that leverage the open Eclipse architecture of Sametime Standard to integrate their telephony features. 

Although each telephony provider integrates its capabilities in its own ways, at a high-level there are broad similarities in the features each has implemented.  This typically includes:

• Voice mail integration
• Phone control (desk phones & soft phones)
• Click-to-call
• Click-to-conference
• Phone presence
• Audio conference integration with Sametime web conferencing

In the upcoming weeks, I'll do a deep dive into the specific options available from telephony vendors.