Siemens continues to move forward and demonstrate leadership across many areas of unified communications. Here's a news release about the latest enhancement to the HiPath solution set. Nice to see Siemens continuing to pay attention to the SMB sector too. That's one area I've always found them particularly strong at. Unlike many solution providers, they don't jsut zero ni on the large enterprise. They focus on the complete solution across the entire ranges of businesses.

Siemens Introduces HiPath® OpenOffice ME™, a Comprehensive Unified Communications Appliance for Small and Medium Businesses

Small Businesses Can Boost Productivity, Efficiency and Responsiveness with the New HiPath OpenOffice ME Appliance Designed for Easy Installation and Fast Payback

BOCA RATON, Fla. — Oct. 22, 2007 — Trying to stay in touch with customers and co-workers in today’s fast moving and mobile world can cost small and medium businesses (SMBs) a fortune. Even worse, an inefficient communications system causes lost time, opportunities and aggravated customers and employees.

Siemens Communications, Inc. (NYSE: SI) aims to help SMBs fix these issues with the new HiPath OpenOffice ME unified communications all in one appliance. It provides a toolset that enables organizations of 20-150 workers to benefit from productivity, mobility and collaboration features.

Each user license includes the Siemens OpenScape Office unified communications suite targeted and designed specifically for the SMB market, which provides presence awareness of other users among many other capabilities. In addition, HiPath OpenOffice supports HiPath Wireless Access Points and for larger WLAN installations the HiPath Wireless C20 Controller – also being announced today – to enable businesses to choose whether they want their voice and data traffic to move through wireline or wireless connections.

Additional Key Built-in Features in HiPath OpenOffice ME include:

• Presence status
• Drag and drop conference management
• Microsoft OutlookTM Plug-in
• Mobility
• Call journal
• Voice and fax message boxes
• Personal auto attendant
• Live call recording
• Dial from any application

To illustrate what all these powerful capabilities can mean for SMBs, presence status enables individuals to easily view coworker availability for a phone call or ad hoc teleconference. Integration with Microsoft Outlook means presence information is taken from an individual’s calendar and used to change call routing preferences and voicemail greetings dynamically. And to meet the demands of today’s on-the-go workforce, HiPath OpenOffice includes mobility features that aid small business employees, whether an office, mobile or home worker.

HiPath OpenOffice has been designed to improve productivity and reduce communication costs incurred by SMBs as they communicate with co-workers, and deliver outstanding levels of customer service. Competitively priced for an aggressive return on investment (ROI), HiPath OpenOffice is engineered to be installed in just a few hours, with no additional servers, applications or accessories.

“HiPath OpenOffice is a tightly integrated advanced communications solution for the SMB domain” said Krithi Rao, Industry Analyst - Enterprise Communications, ICT Frost & Sullivan. “Siemens has leveraged its heritage in HiPath voice and OpenScape unified communications and has built this UC appliance from the ground up. By keeping the interests of the SMB users and the channel in mind, Siemens has included simple provisioning and pricing structures. The move marks a well respected brand taking this market seriously.”

The HiPath OpenOffice ME appliance reflects Siemens Open Communications architectural principles in many ways. Among those are: it unifies business communication and collaboration into a single, simple concept so SMBs can integrate communications much more fully and easily into their business processes. Its rich, human-centered features are easy-to-use and help users be more productive, responsive and satisfied with their work. It can include mobile devices, to provide fixed-mobile convenience for users. And it’s based on open standards and an open IT-oriented software approach to communications.

“To bring HiPath OpenOffice ME to market, we took a new and open approach to meet the needs of smaller businesses and the channels serving them,” said Eve Aretakis, CEO, Siemens Communications, Inc. “We are eager to bring the Siemens Open Communications architecture to this significant segment of the marketplace as well as further enable growth, profitability and business success for SMBs.”

The HiPath OpenOffice ME platform will be available in the United States as of February 2008. Global list pricing begins at $270 per user.

For more information, please listen to the following podcast: http://enterprise.siemens.com/open/us/OpenInformation/PodCasts/Episode4.aspx or visit this site www.siemens.com/us/openoffice.

About Siemens
Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) is one of the largest global electronics and engineering companies with reported worldwide sales of $96 billion in fiscal 2005. Founded nearly 160 years ago, the company is a leader in the areas Medical, Power, Automation and Control, Transportation, Information and Communications, Lighting, Building Technologies, Water Technologies and Services and Home Appliances. With its U.S. corporate headquarters in New York City, Siemens in the USA has sales of $18.8 billion and employs approximately 70,000 people throughout all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Eleven of Siemens' worldwide businesses are based in the United States. With its global headquarters in Munich, Siemens AG and its subsidiaries employ 460,000 people in 190 countries. For more information on Siemens in the United States: www.usa.siemens.com

About Siemens Communications, Inc.
Siemens Communications, Inc. is an affiliate of Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG, one of the world’s leading vendors of Open Communications solutions for enterprises of all sizes, enabling business processes to be more productive, faster and more secure – with any device, network or information technology infrastructure. Siemens Communications, Inc. and Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG are wholly owned subsidiaries of Siemens AG, with about 15,000 employees collectively throughout the world, including the U.S. headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla. For more information about Siemens Communications, Inc., visit http://enterprise.usa.siemens.com/home.html

Note: Siemens and HiPath are registered trademarks of Siemens AG or its subsidiaries and affiliates. Microsoft and Outlook are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. All other company, brand, product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

This release contains forward-looking statements based on beliefs of Siemens management. The words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "forecast," "expect," "intend," "plan," "should," and "project" are used to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the actual results to be materially different, including, among others, changes in general economic and business conditions, changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, introduction of competing products, lack of acceptance of new products or services and changes in business strategy. Actual results may vary materially from those projected here. Siemens does not intend or assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
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