AudioCodes, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is introducing SIP Phone Support (SPS) to its gateways for Microsoft Office Communications Server for both desk phones and mobile devices.

IP phones supported by SPS include AudioCodes’ 300HD family of high-definition IP phones, as well as other third-party IP phones, such as Cisco, Avaya, Aastra, Polycom and other standards-based SIP phones. Smartphone support is enabled using AudioCodes’ Mobile SIP clients, supporting all major smartphones’ operating systems, including Windows Mobile, iPhone OS, Symbian and Android.

“We believe that this is a very significant announcement since many enterprises are dependent on Microsoft desktop applications and have been forced to live in two separate worlds, one for their phone technology and the other for their desktop software environment,” said Elka Popova, North American Program Director, Unified Communications & Collaboration, Frost & Sullivan.  “Many enterprises are looking for integrating the two worlds by connecting their existing installed base of IP phones directly to the Microsoft Unified Communications environment.”

Existing customers of AudioCodes’ Mediant gateways can now upgrade their existing installed base to support SPS. The same gateway can support the SPS functionality while providing a Media Gateway function between Microsoft OCS and/or Microsoft Exchange Server and the enterprise TDM PBX and/or the PSTN.

SPS can scale from small demos of a few users all the way up to supporting enterprise installations of thousands of IP phones and SIP Mobile Clients. By optionally integrating it with the different AudioCodes’ Mediant Media Gateways, it can scale from 120 concurrent RTP to SRTP calls on the Mediant 1000, all the way up to 884 calls on the fault-tolerant Mediant 3000.

Hugh Oakes, managing director for Time2Market, a Microsoft Gold Certified partner with the voice specialization, said OCS has been a “game changer” for its customers. “The ease by which any telecommunications environment can be UC-enabled with Office Communications Server 2007 is truly unique in the industry,” Oakes said in a press statement. “Now with AudioCodes’ SPS, it’s even easier and more cost-effective to migrate to Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The requirement of changing out your legacy handsets is mitigated; we can leverage the SIP handsets already in place. The ability to use the existing handsets makes the migration to Unified Communications even more cost-effective and provides yet another reason why we always recommend that our customers deploy Office Communications Server with AudioCodes’ gateways.”