Updated: July 13, 2020 (April 10, 2006)
Analyst ReportCisco Becomes Telephony Partner
Cisco has finally agreed to partner with Microsoft to create telephony systems compatible with Microsoft’s real-time communications (RTC) software for businesses: Live Communications Server (LCS) 2005, Office Communicator 2005, and Communicator Mobile. This move follows on the heels of Cisco’s announcement of the Unified Communication System (UCS), a new line of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) hardware and software based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), an Internet standard that enables session originators to locate potential participants and deliver invitations. This support is key because Microsoft’s RTC products are also based on SIP. This first Cisco-Microsoft interoperability solution is expected to be ready by Aug. 2006.
Collision Looming?
Even though this agreement is important to Microsoft and adds the last outstanding large telephony vendor to a list that also includes Alcatel, Avaya, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, and Siemens, it seems likely that the relationship will be uneasy.
Cisco is among the world’s largest players in the market for VoIP-based private branch exchanges (PBXs) and desktop handsets. Its CallManager hardware and software sits at the center of its solution, but until UCS it utilized Cisco’s proprietary Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP). Although Cisco has been active on international committees that have developed standards for SIP and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE), the company felt the standards were not yet mature enough for commercial use. With the release of UCS, Cisco has signaled greater confidence in those standards.
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