Case Study: Your Turn to Pick Add-On Features

The case study presented in Chapter 1, "Touring the History Museum of Telephony," gave the telephony requirements for the XYZ Company, as shown in Table 7-1.

Table 7-1. Case Study Requirements

Location	Number of Telephones	Required Features
Headquarters	4500	Voice mail A conference bridge capable of supporting a conference of 20 simultaneous participants
Remote Office 1	2000	Access to the corporate voice mail system Access to the corporate conference bridge Capability to support 72 simultaneous voice paths back to the headquarters
Remote Office 2	30	Access to the corporate voice mail system Access to the corporate conference bridge Capability to support 12 simultaneous voice paths back to the headquarters

In previous chapters, you specified hardware, software, and bandwidth requirements to meet XYZ Company's design guidelines, with the exception of voice mail and conference calling applications. This final case study challenges you to complete the design by recommending an IP telephony-based voice mail and conferencing solution for the XYZ Company. In the following space, describe and justify your recommendation.

Design Description for XYZ Company:

Suggested Solution

Multiple solutions exist for this case study. So, don't be concerned if your solution varies from the suggested solution. The suggested solution from Chapter 4 recommended the use of a Unity Express module for XYZ Remote Office 2. However, XYZ Headquarters and XYZ Remote Office 1 continued to use XYZ Company's existing voice mail system.

This solution recommends the installation of a Cisco Unity server, located at XYZ Headquarters, to provide a converged messaging solution. With Cisco Unity, XYZ Company's employees can retrieve their e-mail, voice mail, and fax messages from Unity's single repository.

To meet the conference calling design requirement, this solution recommends a Cisco MeetingPlace server. Although XYZ Company only needs audio conferencing currently, if in the future XYZ Company decides to add video to its conference calls, Cisco MeetingPlace can support audio, video, and web conferencing.