SmartSIP was rather quietly released this week at Evangelyze.net. It allows enterprises to integrate Microsoft OCS with virtually any other SIP platform and endpoint device.
I've been following the progress of this project for awhile and while I haven't had a chance to try it out yet it looks very promising. Essentially it acts as middleware between OCS and other (otherwise unsupported) SIP platforms.
Evangelyze CEO and fellow Microsoft Subnet blogger Joe Schurman explains howSmartSIPsolves a common enterprise VoIP integration issue:
“Microsoft’s Unified Communications platform is the most innovative communications platform in the communications marketplace”, says Joe Schurman, Founder and CEO of Evangelyze Communications. “With Microsoft’s focus on the total communication and collaboration market with products like Communications Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Live Meeting and client applications like Outlook and Communicator, organizations can easily transition into a software-powered communications platform that integrates into their existing line of business applications and processes. The reality is that it’s going to take some time for customers to adopt to this platform and that the platform needs to be open to existing voice carrier networks, phone devices, softphone applications, and enable branch, store, and remote office location connectivity. Most organizations are locked into contract with voice carriers and PBX manufacturers that are not supported by Microsoft in which they have spent thousands and even millions of dollars on accounts, phone devices or softphone applications that they do not want to or simply cannot afford to stop using. Organizations also have branch, store, and/or remote office locations to support too. SmartSIP is the answer to all of these concerns.
SmartSIP allows the use of commodity SIP VoIP phones instead of expensive OCS-specific phones (although european vendorSNOMis making headway with a sub-$100 OCS phone just now hitting the US market). This includes popular soft phones like x-Lite and others. On the backend SmartSIP allows virtually any SIP PBX to talk to OCS. It enables communication over SIP/TCP or SIP/UDP opening up the options to almost anything including asterisk and a handful of SIP trunking providers.
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