Cisco and IBM this morning announced a new platform for unified
communications and collaboration client development.
According to the two companies, which announced the partnership
at VoiceCon Spring 2007, the platform is based on open technologies
such as Eclipse and OSGi. The platform is designed to accelerate
application development by letting developers include
communications and collaboration capabilities in their
solutions.
Along with their announcement of the platform, Cisco and IBM
announced offerings that include a joint solution based on the new
client platform and a set of plug-ins that integrate the
capabilities of both companies.
The Client Platform is built on an open set of APIs offered by
IBM as a subset of Lotus Sametime and communication APIs from Cisco
to access communications tools such as voice and video. Customers
can also build new classes of applications and services using Lotus
Expeditor. Lotus Sametime 7.5 is based on the platform, Cisco said,
adding that it also plans to develop future versions of the Cisco
Unified Personal Communicator client based on the new platform.
The Cisco and IBM alliance is expected to include joint
offerings based on the Client Platform, communication and
collaboration products from both companies, and expanded
go-to-market activities, including Cisco's selling Lotus Sametime
and IBM's selling Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unity
and Cisco Unified MeetingPlace.
The pairing will create features and services that will be
available later this year, such as:
- Click-to-call and voicemail integration through which Lotus
Sametime users will be able to send instant messages to and from
Cisco Unified IP Phones, view and play Cisco Unity voice messages,
and click-to-call another user directly from the Lotus Sametime
7.5.1 client.
- New joint client offerings, such as federated presence
information, a soft phone, hard phone control, call history,
conferencing and video telephone.
- Cisco Unified MeetingPlace and Lotus Sametime and Notes
integration. Lotus Sametime Web conference integration with and
control of Cisco Unified MeetingPlace audio and videoconferences,
and click-to-call conference capabilities from Lotus Sametime and
Lotus Notes.
In a statement, Coca Cola Enterprises' chief technology
architect, Ray Repic, praised the pairing and said it will better
enable the company to use technology to boost productivity.
"The ability to provide our users with a single focal point for
the full suite of applications they use every day, including such
things as Cisco CallManager and Unity, Lotus Sametime and Notes, as
well as SAP and other applications, is very strategic for us," he
said. "The announced platform by Cisco and IBM will allow us to
more fully integrate core applications, as well as build additional
applications to work with them via open APIs."