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As many of you know by now, Cisco filed a trademark infringement suit against Apple for the iPhone today.
Details here.
My colleague Larry Dignan got an advance warning earlier this morning:
In an email to me earlier today, Cisco spokesman John Noh said:
"The fact is that we have not received the approved agreement back from Apple as [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on January 11th, 2007 with no comments.
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Blogger BuzzMeBaby.com is out with a review of the brand new Linksys WIP300 Wireless-G IP Phone.
A few of the specs:
Dimensions: 4.65 x 1.77 x 0.78 inches.
Battery: 900 mAH Li-Ion, with 3 hours talk time or 50 hours standby time.
Memory: 16MB Flash and 12 MB SRAM.
Phonebook: maximum 200 entries.
Display: 1.8 inches with [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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Obviously Cisco Systems has a dog in this hunt, but still I have to agree with John Earnhardt, who writes the Cisco High Tech Policy Blog for well, uh, Cisco.
Oh and he's also Cisco's senior manager of Policy Communications for Cisco's Office of Worldwide Government Affairs.
John's point is that the FCC's tried-and-true [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 5th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and trends and Cisco and Streaming media.
With all due respect, I believe that not enough of we pundits are grasping the big picture implied in Yahoo!'s announcement yesterday that it is pairing up with Cisco's Linksys division to offer a $99.99 list, Linksys-Dual Mode Cordless Phone for Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.
Let's look beyond the coolness- the handset with color display [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on November 11th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on General and Softphones and yahoo and Cisco.
Well, there are video teleconferencing solutions over IP, some of which are more dependable and advanced than others. But the point of all of these are, as collaboratively well as they work, you kind of know the people you are videoconferencing with aren't really there.
It's not just the quality of the connection, or the [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on October 23rd, 2006 with no comments.
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If you recall,
back in March, I talked about how
Cisco was embracing the SIP standard, i.e. "Cisco is
fully embracing the SIP standard on their desktop phones. I interviewed Cisco last week and they told me that I was the first journalist or analyst to have a "first look" at this major announcement." The March article explains in detail about Cisco's Unified Communications strategy and the impact embracing SIP will have on Cisco and the VoIP industry as a whole.
I wrote back in March, "Perhaps I misread the tone of the Cisco representatives during my call, but they initially seemed to downplay the significance of Cisco's embracing of SIP in favor of focusing on the entire Unified Communications platform. But in my opinion, Cisco embracing SIP is just as big news as their Unified Communications system..." This "big news" and impact on the VoIP industry will be explained in just a bit, but you probably figured it out already from the title of this article.
When I spoke to Barry O'Sullivan vice president and general manager of Cisco's IP Communications Business Unit back in March, he told me, "Our strategy is to put as much intelligence onto the network to allow applications whether our applications or others applications to take advantage of that intelligence. So call processing intelligence, presence intelligence, and rich-media applications. Our strategy is to be open and extensible.
In other words, we have embraced SIP and built in natively into our platform and we'll make these capabilities available to third party applications and phones as well as our own applications and phones".
The "SIP support" exclusive that Cisco gave me caused my eyes to open wide with excitement since open standards will help drive the VoIP industry's growth. I knew what this news meant. Cisco, now offering SIP firmware for their phones and support for 3rd party SIP phones to connect to CallManager was huge.
But it also got me thinking how this could hurt Cisco. Cisco IP phones aren't cheap, and they run Cisco's proprietary Skinny Call Control Protocol (SCCP, or "Skinny"), so you are stuck with these Cisco phones and using Cisco CallManager once you buy them. Before Cisco embraced SIP back in March, you are locked into being a "Cisco shop". Now the beauty of SIP phones is that if you want to upgrade to a different
IP-PBX that supports the SIP standard, it's a relatively painless upgrade to swap out the one and in with the new. Of course, it doesn't even have to be the same IP-PBX vendor. Sick of Cisco CallManager? Go with Asterisk. Sick of Asterisk? Go with Pingtel or another IP-PBX vendor. Point being, you get to
keep your investment in the SIP IP phones without having to shell out ~$200-$300 per VoIP phone per workstation. Are you seeing where I am going with this? Nobody was ever fired for "going with Cisco", but IT managers are now seeing that they are paying a premium to use Cisco gear when they can just as easily use a less expensive open-source solution such as Asterisk.
So it came as no surprise to
read my first application story today from Network World about somebody that was using Cisco CallManager and Cisco IP phones running the Skinny protocol that decided to switch the firmware to SIP and then dump CallManager in favor of a third-party IP-PBX - in this case, an open-source IP-PBX from Asterisk. Sam Houston State University (SHSU) is moving 6,000 students and faculty off Cisco to the open source Asterisk IP-PBX.
The main reason for this migration was cost, according to Aaron Daniel, senior voice analyst at Sam Houston State University. "We thought that it will be more cost effective in the long run to go with an open source solution, because of the massive amounts of licensing fees required to keep the Cisco CallManager network up and running," says Daniel. According to the
article, each phone attached to the CallManager required a separate annual licensing fee to operate. I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. I could have sworn you weren't required to pay annual licensing fees for the phones, but you did have to pay an optional support cost based on the number of phones. But assuming this is true, this could become yet another strong driver to cause Cisco CallManager shops to jump ship to save on TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). In SHSU's Asterisk/Cisco setup, they will keep their existing Cisco phones but attach them to Asterisk servers on the back end, thus eliminating the phone licensing costs.
It's ridiculously easy to switch phones. You simply swap out the firmware on the Cisco phones from Skinny to SIP, reboot the phone, and the phone will automatically register with the Asterisk server. There are millions of Cisco IP phones and CallManager shops out there that now have a choice and as I said in my
March article,
that is a good thing.
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on September 20th, 2006 with no comments.
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Verizon, Cisco, Lucent Technologies, Motorola,
Nortel and
Qualcomm along with key telecom industry suppliers, today announced a vision for the advancement of next-generation network architecture for wireless mobile telecommunications networks. Their goal has been to develop enhancements to a well known, emerging architecture, known as IMS (IP Multi-media Subsystem).
The multi-vendor team has generically termed this architecture A-IMS – for Advances to IMS -- in order to reflect its evolution from work done earlier in technology standards bodies. The A-IMS architecture developed by the task force provides solutions to implement next-generation services in current networks, as well as creates a foundation for the efficient roll-out of both SIP- and non-SIP-based services in future networks.
When I first heard about A-IMS and the taskforces "extensions" to the IMS standard, I couldn't help but be reminded of
Microsoft making extensions to their browser that broke industry standards and fractured the browser market. IMS is accepted as a core component of virtually all next-generation, IP-based communications networks for SIP-based applications, and is designed to assure standardization of multi-media services across all of these interconnected networks. So it is critical that any improvements made by the A-IMS initiative is rolled into the IMS standard.
I listened to the conference call and they claim that these "extensions" to the IMS standard will be put forth to the appropriate standards bodies. They pointed out that the response from the market has been positive and that the goal is not to cause a schism in the standard but instead to help bring more security, interoperability and stronger features.
Additionally, on the conference call Dick Lynch, Executive Vice President and CTO of
Verizon Wireless pointed out that Verizon has been in discussion with other carriers and the goal is to make this a standard implemented wordwide and not just something for Verizon. He added that the years worth of work on enhancing IMS goal is to help move IMS forward.
Dick Lynch said, “We applaud the visionaries who have done a great job developing IMS over the last few years. But as we approached implementation planning, it became apparent that there are some practical, real-world issues that need to be addressed if we are to transparently and completely deploy and maximize the use of this new architecture. To us, it is also important that it be built to support the bridging of the present non-IP reality as we transition to the future. As people look at what our task force has accomplished, I expect that they will see significant benefits, including embedding VoIP hooks into the lower levels of the stack and addressing security issues in a more systemic way. These are exciting advancements that are headed rapidly into our mainstream technology roadmap.”
The current outputs of the task force are a concept document and an architecture document that are being provided to industry leaders. From these documents, the task force companies plan to make necessary standards contributions in the immediate future.
“The promise of IMS is extraordinary, for wireless service providers, as well as for all network providers. A-IMS enhances the opportunity for success for not only the network providers but also for companies in technology, infrastructure, handset manufacturing and service design and, most importantly, for the consumer,” said Charlie Giancarlo, Chief Development Officer, Cisco.
“Having been at the forefront of creating IMS-based next-generation multi-media solutions for mobile networks, we recognize the benefits of this collaboration, particularly in terms of multi-vendor interoperability, as we move into an all-IP mobility world,” said Paul Mankiewich, Chief Technology Officer,
Lucent Technologies Network Systems Group. “This effort continues to enable the delivery of blended voice, video, data and multi-media applications, what we call Blended Lifestyle services, to mobile end users.”
“This joint task force has defined the missing transition step from today to pure IP architecture, and knowledge learned from this effort will help us in development of seamless mobility solutions using this new architecture. We see operators adopting A-IMS to deploy a unified platform for the rapid deployment of new services, including SIP-based interactive applications and non-SIP applications, all of which run on top of IP,” said Fred Wright, Senior Vice President, North America Region, Networks & Enterprise, Motorola.
“With our extensive experience deploying VoIP networks and SIP-based applications worldwide, we have a unique understanding of the system requirements and design and configuration enhancements necessary for successfully implementing VoIP in a wireless environment. With the augmentations to the current standards we envision coming from A-IMS,
wireless VoIP can efficiently arrive in the mainstream a lot sooner than anticipated,” predicted Richard Lowe, President, Mobility and Converged Core Networks, Nortel.
“With A-IMS, Qualcomm will be able to provide a consistent client environment that will drive the faster deployment of new and innovative IP-based applications,” said Roberto Padovani, Chief Technology Officer, Qualcomm. “By deploying an access-agnostic A-IMS- based core network, operators will benefit from seamless integration of a rich array of services delivered across access technologies. A-IMS also provides operators flexibility in configuring and controlling services, and allows the device client to implement consistent policies for dealing with air interfaces, security, signaling and multi-media capabilities, while freeing the application developer to focus on providing compelling functionality to the user.”
The A-IMS standard is based on several key architectural principles, including:
Comprehensive Security: Security is more than authentication, and involves all components in the network, including the devices. Indeed, security agents run on the network devices, providing reverse-firewalls to protect the network from the device and to aid in posture assessment during logon. Comprehensive security also requires the Security Manager to monitor the network at all times, determine baseline traffic patterns, and then use those to detect and respond to anomalies. To respond, the Security Manager can change server configurations, install firewall rules or modify Intrusion Detection Services (IDS) behaviors.
Uniform Treatment of SIP and non-SIP Applications: To the greatest degree possible, A-IMS allows the service provider to manage and control both SIP and non-SIP applications in a uniform way. This is done primarily by usage of the Policy Manager (PM), which allows the service provider to manage the usage of network resources on behalf of both types of applications. Key network functions, including mobility, roaming and packet accounting are also defined in ways that allow them to support both types uniformly.
Dual Anchoring: A-IMS provides a mobile terminal with two IP addresses – one anchored in a Bearer Manager (BM) in the visited network, and one in a BM in the home network. Service provider policy controls which address is used for which applications. This allows for latency sensitive applications to use the visited anchor, whereas applications that require greater levels of service provider control can use the home anchor.
Three-Layer Peering: When connecting to roaming partners, peering occurs at three layers: security peering, used for access authentication, IP peering, used for transport of bearer traffic, and policy peering, used for control of bearer services. Policy server peering involves the usage of a policy server in both the home and visited networks. Usage of two allows for the home provider policies to apply even while roaming, yet allows them to be tempered by visited network policies on usage of the network.
Multi-Tiered Service Interaction Management: Feature interaction management across SIP-based applications, and between SIP and non-SIP applications is provided. Feature interaction management is linked with network policies, allowing for application interaction decisions to take into account the state of the network. The architecture also allows for extensibility to new interaction resolution mechanisms through the addition of service interaction application servers.
Highlights of the A-IMS plan clearly define several “pillars” as essential to the architecture:
Bearer Manager (BM): Allocates resources and manages bearer traffic to meet customers’ service quality requirements. The primary functions include policy enforcement, mobility management, security, accounting, and access control.
Policy Manager (PM): A primary policy decision point for network policies, deciding the ways that the underlying network supports applications on behalf of subscribers and visitors to the network.
Application Manager (AM): The SIP services platform in the network that authorizes access to SIP services, provides SIP registration and authentication functions, and is responsible for the invocation and management of SIP-based features.
Security Manager (SM): Responsible for monitoring the network for security threats and responding to them in real time, making decisions on what devices are allowed access to the network based on their posture – a measure of the safety of the device based on the freshness of its software patches and security features.
Services Data Manager (SDM): The main repository of subscriber and network control data and collects and stores charging data for the network.
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on July 27th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and VoIP and Cisco and qualcomm and ims and motorola and Nortel and lucent and verizon wireless.
Microsoft and
Nortel announced an alliance as part of Microsoft's overall unified communications push. Nortel said it expects more than $1 billion in new revenue over the life of the four-year pact, under which the companies will work together on research and development and partner on sales and marketing. I was on their streaming "virtual press conference", which hosted both Microsoft's and Nortel's CEOs. Both CEOs participating certainly demonstrated their committment to this major partnership.
Their goal is to combine Nortel's network quality and reliability with
Microsoft software's ease of use and to accelerate the availability of unified communications. "Nortel and Microsoft have each led fundamental transformations in their own market - Nortel's digital innovation and Microsoft's software on every desktop," said Mike Zafirovski, president and CEO of Nortel. "By combining our unique strengths, Microsoft and Nortel will accelerate the delivery of unified communications - delivering to our customers a higher-quality user experience, with greater reliability and lower total cost of ownership. That's where we can make a real difference."
We are investing together because the communications industry is at an inflection point," said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. "We will have deep collaboration in product development with Nortel, allowing us to rapidly deliver high-quality, highly reliable solutions that will support mission-critical communications. The opportunity for our customers is fantastic. We will enable them to realize tremendous economic and business benefits from unified communications."
"This is a gutsy play for Nortel - accelerating the move of our voice technology into software and working with the world's software leader as part of our broader business strategy to transform the company into a software and services leader," Zafirovski said. "From this transaction, we believe we can capture well beyond $1 billion in new revenue, ramping up with increased momentum through 2009 via professional services, voice products and applications, as well as data pull-through in the enterprise."
"Unified communications will drive the next major advance in individual, team and organizational productivity in today's 24x7, always-connected and increasingly mobile work environment," said Jeff Raikes, president of the Business Division at Microsoft. "Our software-based approach puts people at the center of communications through a single identity across e-mail, voice mail, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) call processing, instant messaging and video, and intuitively embeds communications capabilities into people's everyday work processes, including the Microsoft Office system and third-party software applications."
Microsoft and Nortel said that under the
deal, which has an option to be extended, that they will jointly sell the advanced unified communications solution and integration services. The plan is to develop a training and incentive program for the companies' sales teams. Microsoft and Nortel will build a joint channel ecosystem using both companies' systems integrator, reseller, and service provider relationships.
Microsoft has been looking for a hardware partner to go up against Cisco and
their unified communications platform. Certainly Microsoft has chosen a strong hardware partner to offer a comprehensive unified communications suite that includes VoIP, presence, mobile, and other functionality. It's worth mentioning however that Nortel has suffered from an accounting scandal in 2004 and the telecom downturn that started in 2001. It remains to be seen if Nortel's Zafirovski can turn around one of the largest telecom equipment manufacturers in the world when cheaper, open-source solutions such as
Asterisk are nipping at the heels of all the
IP-PBX manufacturers.
Shares of Nortel on the New York Stock Exchange rose >5% to above $2.
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on July 18th, 2006 with no comments.
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A mysterious bug is affecting websites hosted by Verio, awholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s NTT. It has become a recurring problem for nearly 48 hours, and as a consequence, Internet users accessing the Net using British Telecom’s ADSL offering and some that connect few via Deutsche Telekom’s network, T-Online, were temporarily unable to access sites hosted by Verio UK.
Reports vary as to how long it took Verio to identify the problem initially. Our sources claim the first problem lasted from approximately midnight to 4 pm the next day on Friday 30th June. It certainly does appear that the problem emerged during overnight routine maintenance. According to Verio’s vice president of operations, Craig Pennington, the mysterious bug appeared within the company’s Cisco 6500 series routers which were showing everything to be fine, while denying access to specific British Internet users.
Verio now says … “We have seen a recurrence of the recent connectivity issue in the Verio’s London Datacenter. At this time, the vast majority of users are able to connect to the facility as normal - it appears that the issue is affecting a small subset of users primarily originating from British Telecom ADSL.”
Pennington implied that the fault lay within the Cisco OS employed by Verio’s core routers. Subsequently Verio has stated that its “core routers were rebooted in serial; whilst this helped mitigate the problem temporarily, it did not fix it. We are working with Cisco to resolve the problem, and are currently working to roll out an emergency upgrade to the Cisco IOS operating system on the core routers.” Pennington conceded that Verio was looking at the standard SLAs (Service Level Agreements) signed with major customers and predicted that there may have to be some payments made as a consequence. The company offers a 99 percent uptime guarantee.
The frustrating aspect for Verio’s customers has been a lack of information. Some sites weren’t aware anything was awry until Verio sent an email out at 4.30 p.m. last Friday announcing that the problem had been dealt with. These sites had been advising their own customers that the problem probably lay with the surfer’s browser. Today, those same sites appeared blissfully unaware the situation had re-occurred.
Written by Tony Dennis on July 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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Interesting IP-PBX stats within
Infonetics's Enterprise Telephony report that shows IP-PBXs continued growth even with a generally slower 1st quarter. They also list the current IP-PBX market leaders (Cisco is listed as #1). I'd be curious the stats for "hosted IP-PBXs" that use SIP trunking with no customer premise IP-PBX equipment. My bet is that market is growing as well.
Overall PBX/KTS revenue down 2%, IP PBX up 1% in 1Q06
Despite a seasonally down quarter for the overall enterprise telephony market, the slow and steady move from circuit switching technology to packet switching technology remains evident, with worldwide TDM system revenue falling 11% and IP PBX revenue inching up 1% between 4Q05 and 1Q06, says Infonetics Research in its latest Enterprise Telephony report.
Combined, worldwide TDM and IP PBX systems revenue dipped 2% to $2.1 billion in 1Q06, but is 15% higher than a year ago. Annual revenue is forecast to grow to $11.4 billion in 2009, driven by strong IP PBX sales worldwide as more organizations move to voice over IP. Between 2005 and 2009, IP PBX revenue is forecast to jump 82% while TDM revenue plunges 88%.
"The overall enterprise telephony market was not immune to the first quarter blues, but the IP PBX category managed to eek out a small quarterly gain" said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst at Infonetics Research. "We recently talked with 450 companies in North America about their voice infrastructure plans, and the results clearly indicate a steady move to VoIP, which will put this market on a nice steady growth trajectory over the next few years."
1Q06 Highlights
- In EMEA, the top IP PBX system line shipment vendors are Alcatel, Siemens, and Nortel
- The top IP PBX system vendors in North America are Cisco, Avaya, and Nortel in a very close race: Cisco was just in 3rd position the previous quarter, and the difference in 1Q06 market share from 1st to 3rd is less than 2 points
- Cisco leads the IP phone market, with 39% unit market share; the next closest competitors are 3Com and NEC, who are tied for 2nd
- Hybrid PBXs account for 63% of PBX line shipments; by 2009, they will account for 78%, up from 61% in 2005
- 45% of PBX/KTS systems revenue comes from EMEA, 30% from North America, 19% from Asia Pacific, and 7% from CALA
Infonetics' report tracks IP deskphones, IP softphones, TDM PBX/KTS systems, and hybrid and pure IP PBX systems and IP PBX shipments by system size (2-40, 40-100, 101-400, 401-1K, and 1K+ lines) in North America, EMEA, Asia Pacific, CALA, and worldwide. Companies tracked include 3Com, Aastra, Alcatel, Avaya, Cisco, Ericsson, Inter-Tel, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Polycom, ShoreTel, Siemens, snom, Sphere, Swyx, Toshiba, Vertical, Zultys, and others.
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on May 30th, 2006 with no comments.
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ShoreTel announced version 6.1 of their IP-PBX which delivers feature-rich IP key system functionality to branch offices and small businesses. Many competing IP-PBXs, Cisco included have neglected or have limited "key system" functionality in their IP-PBX line, which is why ShoreTel does well in the retail and service industries. Also very unique to the ShoreTel product is that it's a single product that targets small businesses all the way up to large businesses with 10,000 employees. Competing solutions have separate products often with separate development divisions and code that is not easily integrated and a migration path that requires a forklift upgrade. In fact, Shoretel is the only IP-PBX that I am aware of that scales from 10-10,000 seats simply via a licence software upgrade. It's an impressive system that TMC Labs hasn't reviewed in a long time. I'll have to add them to the TMC Labs review queue. I spoke with ShoreTel last week to learn more about their announcement being made later today.
Foremost, ShoreTel 6.1, a new version of their flagship product, and three new ShoreTel IP phones were launched today. With this introduction, ShoreTel claims to offer the only key system emulation that is part of a single hardware and software platform that spans all levels of key system and PBX functionality - again addressing the needs of organizations with 10 to 10,000 employees. As I previously explained, other solutions include distinct products for different sizes of companies, forcing folk-lift upgrades when customers move between platforms, and impacting customer service levels by requiring partners and customers to support multiple, complex products.
“Being able to emulate the key system that our employees are used to in one integrated IP phone system with all the PBX capabilities is very important to our business,” said Jason Reed, IT manager at Grubb Properties. “The scalability across multiple sites and ease of installation of the ShoreTel system is also necessary because we frequently set up temporary offices. For example, we will be setting up an office in June for six months for a new real estate development and need to extend ShoreTel 6.1 with the new key system capabilities to that location.”
ShoreTel 6.1 introduces new key system capabilities that combine the features users in this market expect with the flexibility, manageability, usability, and cost-effectiveness of ShoreTel’s unique VoIP technology. The star of this latest release is the ShorePhone IP 212k, an ergonomic IP key system telephone with 12 programmable buttons, exceptional audio quality, and big LCD display.
“ShoreTel 6.1 is an ideal voice platform for many branch offices, retail chains, and small businesses that require key system behavior from their phones,” said Steve Timmerman, vice president of marketing. “The ShoreTel platform offers attractive price points for all sizes of offices and continues to feature the ease of use and management that keep our customers satisfied.”
Other features debuting in this new ShoreTel release include a gigabit IP phone, the IP 560g; a new staff IP phone, the IP 230; expanded support of international requirements; Centrex flash capabilities; personal-assistant and Caller-ID enhancements.
The new ShorePhone IP 212k key system phone has 12 self-labeling programmable buttons that use tri-color LEDs to make paper labels a thing of the past. There are eight hard keys—for Transfer, Conference, Intercom, Redial, Voicemail, Hold, Options, Directory—and two soft keys. A high-contrast LCD display is vertically oriented to mimic the look and feel of a key system telephone.
The ShorePhone IP 212k key system phone enables very fast call handling through a new type of extension called a bridged call appearance. Designed for businesses with shared call answering requirements, this extension is programmed onto buttons on multiple phones, with a button for each call. As a result, calls can be answered, held and retrieved among multiple phones very quickly.
“We are using the key system capabilities and multiple call appearance on the 212k for our warehouse facilities so that anyone can answer a call,” said Ernie Maheu, network engineer at Quaker Fabric, one of the largest producers of upholstery fabric in the world. “This is the best way to handle calls in a warehouse environment because we can answer a call from any phone, and other people will know the call is active. If another person in the warehouse needs to handle the call, it can be placed on hold and picked up by that person.”
The brick-and-mortar constraints of other key system solutions are eliminated by ShoreTel’s unique distributed call control architecture, which allows bridged call appearances to span locations and thus virtualize key system behavior across the enterprise. The bridged call appearance extension can also be programmed on the ShorePhone IP 560, IP 530, IP 230, and BB 24, and docked in the Operator Call Manager interface to allow key system behavior on PCs.
Designed as a branch office solution or for single-site businesses, the ShorePhone IP 212k accommodates up to 12 lines. If more lines are needed, the solution can be expanded to an impressive 108 lines by using it in combination with as many as four ShorePhone BB 24 button boxes.
Small offices can also benefit from a new Centrex flash feature in ShoreTel 6.1 that reduces trunk requirements. One of the buttons on a ShoreTel IP ShorePhone can be programmed for Centrex flash, and then users simply push it to flash an ordinary analog loop start trunk and access Centrex service features. This includes initiating Centrex conference calls.
With Centrex flash, external calls can be transferred to external numbers without tying up trunks for the duration of the transferred call. Without this capability, a small office with four trunks would have to tie up two of them—half the office’s trunk capacity—to accommodate these external transfers.
Another new ShorePhone model being introduced with ShoreTel 6.1 is the IP 230, which offers complete functionality for a very reasonable price. Targeted at general office workers and ACD agents, the ShorePhone IP 230 features 3 programmable buttons supported by green LEDs, and a high contrast LCD display providing four display lines plus a fifth line for four soft keys.
The ShorePhone line is also being extended at the high end with the IP 560g, a gigabit phone aimed at graphics-intensive desktops equipped with gigabit Ethernet drops. It is built upon the existing IP 560 with an upgraded Ethernet switch that supports 1 Gbps operation. The IP 560g ShorePhone features six programmable buttons with tri-color LEDs, and a backlit LCD screen that accommodates six lines of display plus four soft keys.
Like the IP 212k, the ShorePhone IP 230 and IP 560g have eight hard keys, self-labeling buttons that eliminate the need for paper labels, and PoE support. All three are available in black or silver with an optional wall-mount kit, and feature the same ergonomic design and high-quality audio with integrated speakerphone as the entire ShorePhone line.
International Enhancements ShoreTel 6.1 adds Ireland to the growing list of international dialing plans supported by ShoreTel. Thanks to ShoreTel’s unique distributed architecture, a company with offices in the US and Ireland can have a single system image spanning the globe.
Another enhancement in ShoreTel 6.1 exposes the QSIG interface to the ShoreTel Director, ShoreTel’s system management tool, making it easier to configure PRI tie lines to third-party devices such as legacy PBX systems. This addition is driven by requirements in parts of Europe where QSIG, rather than Euro-ISDN, is the standard for PBX-to-PBX networking.
Pricing and availabilityShoreTel 6.1 and the ShorePhone IP 230 are available now. ShoreTel 6.1 is a free upgrade for customers with a maintenance contract. The new ShorePhone IP 230 lists for $259 US. The new ShorePhone IP 212k key system phone lists for $299 US and is scheduled to be available at the end of May. The ShorePhone IP 560g lists for $429 and is scheduled to ship in August. Through a separately-priced advance replacement program, customers can purchase the IP 560g now and get regular IP 560s to use in the interim until they can be swapped with IP 560g’s.
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on May 14th, 2006 with no comments.
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In the 250,000-population Navajo Nation, a remote settlement known as White Rock Chapter House (pictured above) has never had any type of phone service up until now.Residents of the settlement 160 miles northwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico have been so isolated they had to drive six miles on dirt roads to use the nearest pay [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on April 19th, 2006 with no comments.
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You can find the darndest things on the Office and Engineering Technology section of the FCC website. Like, for example, communications and networking hardware that vendors have tested, and have submitted to the OET for approval.In many cases, the stuff that you'll find here has not been announced to the public. Because of that, and [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on March 30th, 2006 with no comments.
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I have this theory about folks who are new to technology, don't know much about a tech company, but maybe see an ad or get word-of-mouth recommendations.More than a few such folks are liable to mis-spell the name of the vendor or service and give up out of a sense of confusion. If they use a [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on March 9th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Vonage and Skype and News and General and trends and CallVantage and Softphones and Google and Microsoft and Cisco and BlackBerry and Earthlink.
Today as expected, Cisco announced they have finally embraced SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). The platform for doing so will be Cisco Unified CallManager5.0, the call-processing component of the Cisco Unified Communications system.As the last major IP systems and equipment vendor to accept SIP, it does kind of seem that Cisco was dragged kicking and screaming [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on March 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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Cisco Systems, a company best known for supplying Internet equipment to Fortune 1000 businesses and Internet service providers, is gearing up for a major move into the consumer electronics market with new products and a new division geared toward home entertainment.
In early February, Linksys, the home networking and consumer division of Cisco, will formally announce a new business unit geared toward home entertainment, said Chris Stevens, vice president and general manager of the yet-to-be-announced network-entertainment business unit for Linksys. Also in early February, the company plans to announce new products for the North American market that have been developed from the acquisition of Kiss, a small Danish company that Cisco bought last summer.
The fruits of this acquisition were shown earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where Linksys introduced the Kiss DP-600, a networked DVD player. This new device was developed to wirelessly connect to the Internet through the home network to deliver 3,000 Web radio stations, online weather forecasts, stock updates and online games into the living room. Currently the DP-600 is only available in Europe. Stevens said a similar product is on its way for the North American market. And although he wouldn’t talk about specifics, he also said Linksys will eventually introduce other networked consumer electronics devices.
“What we announced at CES was really an extension of Kiss’ strategy in Europe,” he said. “It’s not something that fully represents what we plan to do in the U.S. market or the rest of the world. We’re not far enough along to go into specifics about products, but we definitely plan to develop other networked entertainment products that will be built around existing consumer electronics. The idea is to connect these devices together over a home network.”
Stevens explained that the Linksys strategy is to develop products in two main areas. First, it will continue building home networking products, like its wireless routers that connect PCs using 802.11 Wi-Fi signals to the Internet. It also plans to develop some consumer electronics products that will sit on the home network to enable a variety of entertainment options, such as Internet-based TV, music or photo sharing. The products from the Kiss acquisition will be the first to hit the market, but other products will be developed using technology from other acquisitions, such as the $7 billion purchase of cable set-top box maker Scientific Atlanta.
Cisco’s move into the consumer electronics market could pit it against companies such as Sony or Samsung. But Stevens said that Cisco will also make products that compliment existing products from these companies. For example, the Wireless-G Music Bridge, also announced at CES, allows people to wirelessly stream music from their computers and the Internet to their stereo systems.
Cisco also sees the consumer electronics market as a way to drive demand for its traditional home networking gear. In 2004, only about 8.8 percent of homes that had broadband were networked, according to Forrester Research. That figure isn’t expected to break 20 percent for 2005. And by 2010, only 40 percent of broadband homes will be networked, according to Forrester’s projections.
We need to move the home networking market beyond the computer geeks,” he said. “When people buy networked entertainment equipment, it will drive demand for the network itself.”
When viewed from this perspective, the Linksys strategy is very similar to Cisco’s traditional enterprise and service-provider businesses. The company has developed demand for faster IP networks by building new markets that drive demand for network equipment. For example, Cisco is the No. 1 supplier in the world for IP handsets to large corporate customers. By creating a voice-over-IP market, Cisco has ensured that its customers will have to upgrade their networks. And since Cisco is already the dominant player in the Ethernet switching and IP routing markets, it’s likely these customers will come back to Cisco to buy more networking equipment.
From News.com
Written by Garrett Smith on January 18th, 2006 with no comments.
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It looks like Cisco is set to unveil a SIP based unified messenger, with their upcoming release of Call Manager (CM) 5.0 this spring. The messenger is presence based, converging video, voice, unified messaging, conferencing, and instant message.
Garrett Smith
Written by Garrett Smith on January 5th, 2006 with no comments.
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Thinking of adding a Cisco CP-7920G WiFi phone to your SIP based phone system?
Well think again!
Cisco phones have long been the envy of every customer looking at desktop handsets, but have proven difficult to work with especially because they are natively SCCP (also known as “Skinnyâ€) and require a fair amount of time to be converted to SIP.
SIP firmwares are readily available for the Cisco CP-7960, CP-7960G, CP-7940, CP-7940G, CP-7912G, and the CP-7910G. A SIP firmware, however, is not available for the Cisco CP-7920G.
Although Cisco does not yet have a WiFi handset that supports SIP, plenty of other manufacturers do. These include the popular UTStarcom F1000 and the Hitachi IPF-5000.
While Cisco remains the front runner in the VoIP handset market, they do not currently have a WiFi handset that works with a SIP based phone system. Look for Linksys, the SOHO/SMB division of Cisco, to offer a solution, in the coming months.
Garrett Smith
Written by Garrett Smith on January 5th, 2006 with no comments.
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Just one day after the
Apple iPhone was announced, Cisco announced it was suing Apple over trademark infringment. Apparently, they were under negotiations, but they fell though. David Berlind
at ZDNet has more.
Any name ideas? I was thinking
aPhone for Apple Phone, especially now that Apple is now
simply Apple, Inc. instead of Apple Computers.
Too bad
www.aphone.com is taken already, ironically by a website promoting Cingular service - the exclusive provider of the new iPhone.. err I mean aPhone or soon-to-be-renamed Apple phone thingy or the "phone formerly known as iPhone".
.
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on January 1st, 1970 with no comments.
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I was just on the phone with Garvin Thomas, a reporter from
NBC11 News who wanted my take on the
iPhone lawsuit between
Apple and
Cisco and to discuss what he learned. First, when you search the
US Patent and Trademark Office database for iPhone you will see 4 separate trademark applications for the term "iPhone". One is by Cisco, another by Teledex, another by Xtreme Mobile, and lastly a trademark application owned by "Ocean Telecom Services LLC" based out of Delaware. Apple is noticeably absent from this list, so perhaps one of these companies is a shell company acting on behalf of Apple. Sure enough when I checked the patent descriptions for all of them, the only one that resembled the Apple iPhone was the application from Ocean Telecom Services. The application appears to have been filed on September 26, 2006, though I also see an earlier date called "foreign filing date" of March 27, 2006 from Trinidad and Tobago. The trademark application states:
C 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: handheld and mobile digital electronic devices for the sending and receiving of telephone calls, faxes, electronic mail, and other digital data; MP3 and other digital format audio players; handheld computers, personal digital assistants, electronic organizers, electronic notepads; magnetic data carriers; telephones, mobile phones, computer gaming machines, videophones, cameras; prerecorded computer programs for personal information management, database management software, electronic mail and messaging software, paging software, database synchronization software, computer programs for accessing, browsing and searching online databases, computer software and firmware, namely operating system programs, data synchronization programs, and application development tool programs for personal and handheld computers; electronic handheld units for the wireless receipt and/or transmission of data that enable the user to keep track of or manage personal information; software for the redirection of messages, Internet e-mail, and/or other data to one or more electronic handheld devices from a data store on or associated with a personal computer or a server; and software for the synchronization of data between a remote station or device and a fixed or remote station or device; computer hardware and software for providing integrated telephone communication with computerized global information networks
C 028. US 022 023 038 050. G & S: hand-held unit for playing electronic games
So this must be the Apple iPhone since it describes it to a tee. Take a look at the last description which states the iPhone will be a hand-held unit for playing electronic games. Guess Sony PSP and Nintendo GameBoy have some competition on their hands. Perhaps the device will be compatible with the arcade games recently introduced for download on iTunes which works with Apple's fifth-generation video iPods. Though at least the iPods have a 4-direction thumbpad/wheel. The Apple iPhone has only a touch screen for input, so I'm guessing only simple games that don't require a lot of finger dexterity. Though I suppose using finger gestures you could play games, but it would be more difficult. The attorney of record for Ocean Telecom Services (Apple) is James Johnston and he can be reached at jjohnstonoctelecom-at-sign-gmail.com. I plan to follow-up with him soon to get his take on all of this.
I also see that
Apple filed in Australia using the same Ocean Telecom Services. So there are two questions in all of this.
1) What was in the agreement that Apple didn't want to abide by?
Answer: That is something that unfortunately I don't think we'll get an answer to, since there was probably non-disclosure agreements in place during the negotiation phase.
2) What is Apple thinking if it is so clear that Cisco has the trademark? Why launch with this name if you haven't inked a deal?
Answer: Obviously, Apple must think they have a legal case in fighting Cisco on this. So what are the possible legal issues that would give Apple a strong case? The NBC News reporter told me he spoke with some patent and trademark attorney experts and they believe that Apple thinks there are other companies out there with goods or services called iPhone, not just Cisco. in effect, Cisco has not been protecting the trademark. The other possibility is that Cisco had abandoned the trademark and not used it for a period of time. In fact, this seems to be true since the
Linksys CIT200 and the
Linksys CIT310, (
both of which I reviewed) are now called the iPhone and
were only recently renamed on December 18th.. Specifically, each Linksys/Cisco product is called the Cordless Internet Telephony Kit or iPhone for short. Although they're keeping the CIT### for customers to determine the exact model within the iPhone "family". I guess you would call it the CIT200 iPhone and the CIT310 iPhone. The PDF manuals still reference the old name, such as
this manual for the CIT200 and I couldn't find a single reference to the word "iPhone" in the manual even though I see "iPhone®" with the registered trademark throughout their website. I guess they missed that. Time to re-print/convert those PDFs!
In fact, there are a bunch of other iPhones in the Linksys family of iPhone products. Here's the complete list:
The most compelling or likely attack on Cisco's trademark is on "a family of marks". The best analogy to use is McDonalds. Say you decide to start selling McTofu burgets - even if there is no trademark on
McTofu burgers, McDonalds can go to court and state they have a "family of marks". In fact, the court has ruled in the past in favor of McDonalds against a mattress company that tried to trademark McSleep. They ruled it belongs to McDonalds. So what Apple could do is say "we put 'i' in front of something is what we do, with iPod, iMac, iTunes, etc.". Of course what shoots that down is the fact that Cisco trademarked this term in 1996 BEFORE Apple launched the iMac or the iPod.
Another argument that trademark experts are saying is that Cisco in effect let their trademark expire and only brought it back later AFTER Apple had already brought to market a family of marks and products with the letter "i". Most experts expect that Cisco and Apple will settle this dispute before it goes to court, but knowing Steve Jobs, I wouldn't be surprised if he battles big, mighty Cisco. It's not like Steve Jobs ever tried to take on any other big heavyweights... like say Microsoft? :)
Another strong case for Apple would be to point out that if you went on the street and asked anyone on the street who do you think makes the iPhone, 90% of the people would guess iPhone, even if the iPhone didn't exist. This kind of evidence is actually admissible in court and used in these cases. Apple could argue that the family of marks using the letter "i" is more part of Apple than it is part of Cisco. In which case, if Apple win the case, Cisco could be forced to change their product-line name. Of course the CIT-series didn't have the name iPhone until very recently.
What's interesting is that Cisco was looking to "share" the trademark with Apple. Perhaps Cisco was looking to get some of the technology used in the Apple iPhone for their own products which would be a boom to Cisco. Technically, Linksys, since Cisco is focused on business and Linksys on the home/consumer-side. Unless Cisco or Apple divulges the terms of the tentative agreement I guess we'll never know.
Finally, the products are so different, nobody could confuse the two. If you just read the descriptions on the trademark applications you can see how different they are. Delta Dental, Delta Airline, Delta Faucet. Yes the Cisco iPhone is a VoIP phone,
but the Apple iPhone is a portable computing device that is a mobile phone, Internet browser, data device, mp3 player, and more. Though, the experts state this is perhaps the weakest argument since both products are still phones.
It will be interesting to see how this all pans out and who gets to keep the "i" in iPhone. Kinda reminds me of my "
Grinch Who Stole the 'I' in CTI" blog post. Maybe I should re-do that blog post only with Cisco and Apple as the main characters. B)
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on January 1st, 1970 with no comments.
Read more articles on Mobile Phones and Microsoft and Apple and Cisco and iPod and lawsuit and itunes and linksys.
Jon Arnold has some
interesting thoughts on how blogging is making in-roads in the large tech companies, including Cisco. This was in response to my blog post about how Apple was able to
keep their iPhone secret from both blogger and mainstream journalist alike.
During Cisco's C-Scape analyst conference last month, I posted about how they have set up a corporate blog and that they are embracing new media to be more accessible and reach the online community. They were nice enough to invite me to post there, and I'm definitely one of the early adopters supporting their blog initiative.
Jon Arnold is an interesting thinker with great insights into the VoIP industry. Jon will be headed to TMC's
ITEXPO in a couple weeks, so I'll have to try and hook up with Jon and get his thoughts on the industry.
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on January 1st, 1970 with no comments.
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Not too surprising and plenty of blog, blog, blogging on the Cisco lawsuit over Apple's use of the iPhone name for its new little product -- did anyone miss this announcement?
Great to see this Cisco news item that comes straight out of the Cisco PR works. It used to be that we had salary negotiations (and other important stuff) from the sporting world fought over in print, rather than face to face.
Now, thanks to mod tech, we can have lawsuits fought out in front of us regular guys (and gals), too -- and in close to real-time, too.
Seems it's all over open vs. closed architecture (sound familiar?)
Ain't life beautiful? 
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on January 1st, 1970 with no comments.
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You knew Macworld and CES in the same week would be exciting, but who expected that Apple's show would blow the other one completely out of the water?
Funny what a little iPhone announcement -- and the ensuing announcement from Cisco about a lawsuit -- will do for blogging and all other forms of gadget reporting ... 
A cell phone is to an Internet phone as an airplane is to a faucet? Go here to make sense out of this.
Thanks to Corante for the photo ...
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Citrix Systems Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. today announced enhanced click-to-call technology that allows users to click on a phone number embedded in any application on a Citrix Presentation Server to have the call automatically dialed on a Cisco Unified IP phone.
The time-saving update expands upon the previous version of the technology, which allows users to click to call on phone numbers in Microsoft Outlook or Web-based page views, a Citrix spokeswoman said.
Barry Phillips, senior director of product marketing at Citrix, said thousands of applications are already deployed by large companies on Citrix Presentation Server, and all of those applications support the new expanded click-to-call capability. Those applications include products from Siebel Systems Inc., SAP AG and Oracle Corp.
Parsram Rajaram, senior systems analyst for the city of Winter Park, Fla., said there are potentially several applications used by more than 200 city workers where a click-to-call function would save users time and increase productivity. One public safety reporting and writing application contains many fields filled with phone numbers, which a public safety officer could click to be connected to investigators around the world, he said.
For the past six months, Winter Park has been using Cisco IP phones and the Citrix click-to-call function to improve productivity for purchasing department workers. Users browse hundreds of Internet sites to find information on products being reviewed for purchase, and can click on a phone number to have it automatically dialed, saving valuable seconds, he explained.
"It's a brilliant technology," Rajaram said. "The purchasing department has a lot of places to call, and they make hundreds of calls a day. This speeds up the process, and they're very happy. They don't complain about sore fingers anymore."
Winter Park added the functionality and related functions for easier calling from Citrix two months after installing Cisco IP phones and Cisco's CallManager IP voice switch, he said.
Phillips said the Citrix and Cisco technology requires Cisco IP phones and Cisco's CallManager, as well as a Citrix Application Gateway and the Voice Office software suite of applications. All are available now, with the gateway priced at $5,115 and the software starting at $50 per user. In addition to click-to-call functionality, other functions in the suite include a phone directory, zone paging, broadcast alerts and visual voice mail. Both Citrix products will be sold through the Cisco Solutions Plus program and Cisco resellers.
Phillips said Citrix is planning future enhancements that include click-to-IM and click-to-conference.
Elizabeth Herrell, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said click to call is one of a variety of emerging technologies that support unified communications where voice and data are combined to improve user productivity. Other large vendors that also have click-to-call technology or plan to offer it soon include Microsoft Corp., IBM, Alcatel and Avaya Inc., she said.
The Citrix approach, featuring access to any application, requires just one interface, said Brian DalBello, Cisco's director of product marketing for IP communications.
Source: ComputerWorld
Written by Dal on January 1st, 1970 with no comments.
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Note: Well I guess Craig McCaw will have to more time to make his case for Wimax
Cisco Systems Inc. is taking a wait and see approach to WiMAX technology while continuing to market to what it sees as a largely untapped small to mid-sized business market. Charlie Giancarlo, Cisco's chief development officer, said his company is not planning on entering the radio market any time soon. “We've been sitting on the sideline for a number of reasons,” he said during a press conference Wednesday at CScape, Cisco's annual analyst conference.
Although WiMAX has been “moving a lot over the past three years,” one of the major applications is last-mile access in regions without adequate wired infrastructure.
“We don't believe in fixed wireless as a viable technology in the developing world,” Giancarlo said of WiMAX (Wireless Interoperability for Microwave Access), which was ratified as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers's 802.16 set of standards.
Giancarlo said because WiMAX operates in licensed spectrum, wireless operators need to agree it is a viable technology. Another concern is the plethora of wide-area wireless technologies already available. “There's a chicken and egg (problem) there,” he said. “It's just another wireless technology. That's not enough to allow Cisco to enter and be successful in that market.”
A Canadian analyst who attended the conference said Cisco officials are smart for taking a cautious approach to the WiMAX market.
“I agree with their point that there's going to be more network diversity on the wireless side rather than less in the next few years,” said Tony Olvet, vice president of IDC Canada's communications practice. “To make a big bet on any single one might be a bit risky, so it behooves them to stay neutral in terms of the various technologies -- WiMAX and what have you.”
Although Cisco is not making WiMAX equipment, it is partnering with other vendors in developing technologies using WiMAX as a backhaul, rather than as an access technology, Giancarlo said. For example, he said, the company is working on interfaces to wireless radios so users can run Internet Protocol-based applications over WiMAX networks.
Cisco has also joined forces with IBM Corp. to provide a wide-area wireless network to the county of San Mateo in California, which will initially be based on Wi-Fi but will use WiMAX as a backhaul technology.
Many businesses in the Silicon Valley region do not have access to inexpensive high-speed Internet services, said Brian Moura, assistant city manager of San Carlos CA, who spoke on a panel on IP Mobility at CScape.
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Written by Dal on January 1st, 1970 with no comments.
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Because the Cisco of today was built on a hundred acquired start-ups, the company's top technologist wants to know: "What happened to all those entrepreneurs?"
Cisco's Chief Development Officer Charles Giancarlo raised this question in a talk at the company's C-Scape analyst conference Tuesday. He said Cisco is realigning itself to squeeze new ideas out of its internal talent pool — built through 108 acquisitions since 1993, with almost half of the 10,000 employees it has acquired still on board.
To spur more internal inventiveness, Giancarlo said Cisco has reorganized how it manages and supports its Emerging Technology groups — product areas outside of Cisco's core routing and switching, and its six Advanced Technologies: enterprise IP communications, home networking, optical networking, security, storage-area networking and wireless technology.
"There was criticism in the press for some time that said Cisco couldn't innovate, and that Cisco had to buy [companies] to come up with new things," Giancarlo said.
He said he wonders what happened to all the inventive technologists Cisco acquired "who were considered very innovative, and then as soon as they became part of Cisco, couldn't invent their way out of a paper bag," according to some industry perceptions.
Cisco defines Advanced Technologies as product areas where the company expects to see $1 billion in annual sales. Emerging Technologies are defined as areas that have the potential to become $1 billion businesses.
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Written by Dal on January 1st, 1970 with no comments.
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Note: Wow, I think some precedent will be set if this case goes to a ruliing.
Cisco Systems Inc. late Wednesday
said it has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Apple Inc. seeking to prevent Apple from using the
"iPhone" trademark.
Cisco said it obtained the iPhone trademark in 2000 after acquiring Infogear. Cisco said Infogear's original filing for the trademark was on March 20, 1996. "There is no doubt that Apple's new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission," said Mark Chandler, Cisco's senior vice president and general counsel, in a statement.
Written by Dal on January 1st, 1970 with no comments.
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Note: I like the Jabber client. I have used it internally and on a couple Asterisk installations. Very solid IM client.
Jabber, a real-time messaging company, on Tuesday plans to announce the integration of its Jabber Extensible Communications Platform (Jabber XCP) with Cisco's Unified MeetingPlace conferencing product, bringing video, voice, and Web conferencing to customers through the Jabber Messenger client.
With the addition of these capabilities, Cisco's communications platform gains a capability missing from competing offerings from IBM and Microsoft, according to Jabber CEO Paul Guerin: multiuser chat. "IBM and Microsoft don't even offer multiuser chat at this point," he says. Jabber XCP is an open, real-time presence and messaging platform that makes communication easier by streaming XML data.
The company has done similar integrations with Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional (formerly Macromedia Breeze) and WebEx. "This is very much a customer-driven partnership," says Guerin. "Cisco is doing well with Wall Street and government customers, so it's a natural fit."
The Cisco-Jabber integration aims to make communication and collaboration easier by exposing presence information so workers know when their coworkers are free to interact and by providing easy access to voice, video, and Web conferencing.
In contrast with products like Microsoft's SharePoint, says Dave Uhlir, VP of marketing, "you don't have to sign your life away to a technology architecture" and deal with "massive integration efforts" to get workable collaboration. Jabber counts 15 defense and intelligence agencies as customers, along with five of the eight largest investment banks in the United States.
"One of Jabber's core value propositions is you can extend the technology at almost any point, client or server or whatever," explains Guerin. Another, says Uhlir, "is scalability and the abilit
