“No, Unity is not dead. Unity is a very mature well proven Unified Messaging product with a very large installation base. We have on our roadmap a Unity 8.0 release scheduled for later this year where you will see new functionality to keep the product fresh such as Exchange 2007 native VPIM support, Voice User interface improvements to make the mobile experience more efficient, and set-up and maintenance improvements to speed installations and ease maintenance.

We have two different products really designed for two different customer needs.

• Cisco Unity is a Windows Based Unified Messaging system for those customers that desire a tight Microsoft Exchange and AD integration.

• Cisco Unity Connection is a Linux based Integrated messaging solution for those customers that want the UM experience, but don't want the challenges associated with AD and Exchange integrations. Cisco Unity Connection is designed to be very simple to deploy (generally less than 2 hours to set up), much less costly to maintain with fewer servers, and due to its close ties with CUCM (Namely the VOS operating system - we actually ship on the same media) we are able to leverage common and familiar platform services for tasks such as backup, diagnostics and patch management. We are also able to release and support some of the newer UC functionality with Connection and therefore that is why you see so much engineering focus on Connection with things such as STT on the roadmap.”