Call Of The SMB: Cisco Ties VoIP To Microsoft CRM
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Cisco Systems&#39; collaboration with Microsoft to target the SMB market is starting to bear fruit as the networking vendor Monday launched a new application that integrates Microsoft CRM with its VoIP platform.
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Ziff Davis - Microsoft CRM leans on partners to fill functionality gaps.
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Cisco executives told analysts this week that the company plans to take data center virtualization into areas such as application-aware switching and will partner to provide systems management software.
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Microsoft Corp. is finally launching its long-awaited CRM service at its Business Solutions Conference in Denver this week.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM and Cisco will announce today at the Spring 2007 VoiceCon conference in Orlando, Florida, a joint effort to create an industrywide unified communications and collaboration platform. The expectation is that a single open platform, rather than a potpourri of platforms offered by multiple vendors, will entice a large number of developers to design communications services for the enterprise. In the first step toward that end, IBM and Cisco have pledged to base the new platform, called UC2 (Unified Communication and Collaboration), on Eclipse and OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative) technologies. In addition, both companies unveiled a series of upcoming offerings jointly developed by the two companies using an open set of APIs from Lotus's Sametime collaboration application and communication APIs from Cisco. Among the solutions planned for later this year are click-to-call and voice mail integration to allow Sametime users to send instant messages to and from Cisco Unified IP phones. Another jointly developed offering will include federated presence information, call history conferencing, and video telephony. The federated presence solution will take information stored in Cisco's IP network, such as availability and location, and share that information with a Sametime client. "If you are looking at a Sametime client, you can see if the phone is not busy and if the person is in, say, building 21 on the third floor," said Barry O'Sullivan, vice president of IP Communications at Cisco. According to Adam Gartenberg, offering manager for the UC2 Software division of IBM Lotus Software Group, the growth of unified communications services has been impeded by a lack of a consistent programming environment. On the other hand, the ubiquity of Eclipse will encourage the large Eclipse community of developers to design communications services that extend the client capabilities of ERP and CRM applications to remote users. "The UC2 platform is extensible, allowing developers to create plug-ins or mini applications to access applications remotely," said Gartenberg. For example, a developer might extend an expense approval application in SAP by creating an applet that makes it available in an instant messaging environment. There is also no doubt that enterprise-level companies are eager to see what unified communications can do for them. Ray Repic, chief technical architect at Coca-Cola Enterprises, says he likes the idea of leveraging his existing technology to create incremental value. Repic already uses Lotus SameTime and Cisco's IP telephony. "There's nothing we need to purchase," said Repic. In addition Repic said he is eager to get it up into Coca Cola's prototyping lab.Â  "We need to understand how we can use voice as an application," Repic said. As part of the announcement, Cisco also said that it will develop future versions of its Unified Personal Communicator on the new UC2 client platform. Also planned is a certification program to certify that the solutions developed on UC2 platform meet the specifications laid out by IBM and Cisco. However, despite the cooperation between Cisco and IBM and the stated reasons for it, analysts see Microsoft as the elephant in the room.Â  "The unified communications battle will come down to Cisco versus Microsoft," said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. Some users have held off on the technology because they are waiting to see what Microsoft will do with it, he said. Meanwhile, Nortel Networks, which last year announced a partnership with Microsoft in this area, hasn't ended up with much of an advantage that other telephony vendors don't have, Kerravala said.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft's goal to provide a unified communications infrastructure for the enterprise moved forward Tuesday with the release of a private beta of software it sees as its communications hub. The company released Office Communications Server 2007 to about 2,500 IT professionals in a private beta, said Paul Duffy, a group product manager at Microsoft. It's the first time Microsoft has offered software for making voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) part of integrated communications services alongside corporate instant messaging, e-mail, and video conferencing all running on one IP network, he said. Office Communications Server 2007 runs in conjunction with Office Communicator 2007, which is the accompanying desktop software. In July, Microsoft announced aÂ strategic alliance with Nortel NetworksÂ calling for interoperability between Microsoft communications software and networking infrastructure from Nortel. Office Communications Server 2007 also will interoperate with products from Avaya, NEC Phillips, and Siemens CommunicationsÂ through partnerships Microsoft has with those vendors, Duffy said. "Customers can deploy Office Communications Server and Communicator with infrastructure they have -- with IP telephony that they might have from one of those vendors -- or they can deploy it in conjunction with an IP PSTN (public switched telephone network) gateway," he said. Though Microsoft is working with vendors on VOIP, there is some belief in the industry that the company eventually will look to provide the entire software infrastructure for VOIP and other communications offerings. Such a move would hardly be a stretch, as Microsoft's strategy for entering new markets has often been to partner with companies that specialize in certain software until it is able to build out its own portfolio. Microsoft does not just aim to enter the VOIP-enablement market with Office Communications Server 2007, but rather provide a software hub that will allow the various facets of network communication to interoperate, Duffy said. For instance, by using Office Communications Server with Microsoft's Exchange Server messaging software and Outlook e-mail client, a user can respond to an e-mail received in Exchange with a VOIP call using Communications Server and Communicator, he said. Office Communications Server and Office Communicator 2007 are expected to be available in the second calendar quarter of 2007.
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VoiceCon Spring 2007 -- Highlighting customer and partner demand for interoperability in the unified communications market, Cisco Systems, Inc.
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Cisco Systems Inc. this week announced plans to acquire Dynamicsoft Inc., a maker of carrier VoIP software based on Session Initiation Protocol.
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WebEx, a company best known for Web conferencing, announced this week that it will use its WebEx Connect desktop technology to host Oracle's Siebel CRM On Demand.?Josh Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting said there is a lot more that can be done with WebEx's ability to "get to the desktop.""The fact that WebEx has a platform for SaaS delivery is one of the best kept secrets," said Greenbaum.?Besides hosting the CRM suite, the WebEx Connect client will also give users the ability to create mashups between Siebel On Demand and WebEx's Sales Center, an offering that is targeted at Web conferencing in sales situations such as team selling and sales calls.??The combination of the two solutions will also give users the ability to integrate WebEx meetings with CRM prospecting activity reports.While the Siebel CRM On Demand solution has kept a low profile since Oracle's acquisition more than two years ago, the partnership between Oracle and WebEx may change that, say analysts."WebEx's corporate footprint is big. These guys are already there [in the enterprise.], added Greenbaum.According to Cisco, WebEx parent company, WebEx has 2.3 million registered users.Siebel CRM On Demand is slated to be available through the WebEx platform in early 2008.
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There are several technologies similar to DomainKeys, including Cisco&#39;s Identified Internet Mail and Microsofts&#39;s SenderID.
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Cisco(R) (NASDAQ: CSCO) has established a state-of-the-art customer briefing center (CBC) in Singapore to showcase the latest innovations in Internet Protocol (IP) networking technology.
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Cisco&#39;s Irvine-based Linksys division has announced new relationships with a number of other companies. Linksys said that it has signed an agreement with Verizon to include the company&#39;s VoIP phones in its services.
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Cisco launched a virtual world that it hopes will encourage resellers to meet with application developers to exchange information that helps provide products to Cisco customers.
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Cisco Systems and Microsoft&#39;s partnership in the small- and midsized-business market is bearing fruit. On Monday, Cisco announced a new software product that will link its voice over Internet protocol products
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Microsoft and Cisco Systems will collaborate to make their emerging products for network security compatible. The vendors had been working independently in the area of PC access to networks but say customers
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Cisco this week launched an upgrade to its CallManager IP PBX platform, broadening its encryption support for IP phones and other VoIP devices, such as VoIP gateways and voicemail servers.
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Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. on Monday will announce a collaborative effort designed to bridge a divide between their emerging network access-control architectures.