Lotus teams with Cisco, Nortel on unified communications
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Observers say partnerships between vendors show they are hoping to ignite a spark toward adoption of unified communications infrastructures that some predict could peak in about three years within corporate environments.
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(InfoWorld) - Cisco Systems used the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco to trumpet its transformation from "packet pusher" to "infrastructure" company, unveiling a string of product updates that unify its diverse security portfolio on Monday. However, the company still has work to do to make that transformation complete and will need to ramp up its outreach to third-party vendors to make initiatives like its SONA (Service Oriented Networking Architecture) and Network Admission Control a reality, analysts and customers say. Cisco announced releases to its ASA (Adaptive Security Appliance) product, IPS, CSA (Cisco Security Agent), CSM (Cisco Security Manager), and MARS (Mitigation Analysis and Response System) products. The enhancements will give enterprises better protection against a new generation of sophisticated and targeted attacks and an evolving "human network" of mobile and Web based technologies, Jeff Platon, Cisco's vice president of security marketing told a room full of reporters and analysts on Monday. "When you think about our role and how it's evolved, we've moved from being a packet pusher to an infrastructure company," Platon said. "And if you look at the trends, Cisco's not going to be a network vendor. Whether its voice or video in the consumer space, those requirements are going to change what Cisco becomes to the marketplace." But key elements of the company's transformation are very much works in progress that will require Cisco to forge close ties with other vendors before they bear fruit. SONA, an effort to create a service-oriented architectural framework that unifies network-based services like security, mobility, and location on virtualized platforms, will require close cooperation with third-party vendors that may be Cisco competitors in some areas, said Richard Palmer, senior vice president of Cisco's Security Technology Unit. "If we allow third-party applications to operate on our platforms like ASA and ISR, it will make for a tighter set of partners and more longevity," Palmer said. Currently, Cisco has a number of teams across the company developing SONA components for functions like authentication and control plane and data plane integration for third-party products to work on platforms like Cisco' ASA, Palmer said.Â  To promote SONA, Cisco will strike more deals like the joint marketing initiative with SAP on governance, risk, and compliance solutions, which it announced in September. Similarly, the company will need to work closely with firms like Microsoft and other third-party vendors on issues like security. Cisco and Microsoft have been hammering out an integration of their two competing NAC frameworks for more than two years, largely at the urging of enterprise customers. Palmer allowed that many enterprise customers may prefer to use features built into Windows Vista in lieu of Cisco's own CSA client software. "Clearly, what we do is driven by customer choice. Customers are saying, 'Look, we're committed to Vista, and we want you to work more closely," he said. However, Palmer said that some customers may still prefer the CSA client for endpoint security. But for Cisco's enterprise customers, choice and integration with other vendors remains a pressing issue. Patricia M. Lawicki, vice president and CIO at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), a Cisco customer since 1987, said that the company's technology plays a key part in helping PG&E restructure its IT operations after the California electricity crisis of 2000 and 2001 forced the company into bankruptcy. Cisco's technology is helping PG&E with a major business transformation, including the phasing out of mainframe and first-generation client-server applications, a major deployment of technology from SAP, and overhauls of supply chain and customer service systems. While PG&E is using the company's NAC appliance, Cisco's full NAC solution, which requires wholesale upgrades to its networking infrastructure, remains too expensive for PG&E to adopt, especially with the wealth of legacy Cisco hardware that would need to be replaced, Lawicki said. A committed Cisco customer, PG&E still wants to be able to choose best-of-breed solutions -- particularly in areas like security -- and is pushing Cisco and its other suppliers to make that possible, she said.
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SAN FRANCISCO - Cisco Systems Inc. channel partners will be able to offer real-time monitoring of enterprises' networks after the company agreed to acquire NetSolve Inc., the networking giant said Thursday.
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Cisco Systems and Fujitsu will partner to develop high-end routers and switches for use in advanced IP networks. Initally, Fujitsu will offer co-branded products running Cisco&#39;s IOS-XR operating
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WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) - Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks on Tuesday won contracts totaling $2.5 billion to help Sprint upgrade its wireless network to offer high-speed service.
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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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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.
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IBM and Cisco Systems have expanded a partnership to provide businesses with automated identity and access security to networks. The two companies announced on Thursday that they have integrated IBM&#39;s Tivoli
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IBM released Atlas, a software toolset that provides advanced search and analysis functions for its enterprise social networking product, Lotus Connections, on Tuesday.&quot;Atlas looks at the data within Connections and does some visualizations of the information,&quot; said Chris Lamb, senior product manager. &quot;The main point is that it is a way to visualize the social data from a line-of-business perspective and a personal level.&quot;The Atlas suite contains four components dubbed My Net, Find, Reach, and Net.The Net component provides a view of groups that have formed within an organization due to work on similar projects, IBM said. The point is to help users find ways to improve communications among various nodes throughout the company. My Net provides a similar view but focuses on a user&#39;s personal network.Atlas also includes Reach, a dashboard-like tool that helps users &quot;navigate the six degrees of separation that divide them from a colleague,&quot; as an IBM statement describes. The purpose is to help workers more quickly connect with people in the organization who have a particular skill set or area of knowledge.The last component is Find, which can provide search results that leverage social networking-related data, such as blogs and reporting structures, according to IBM.Atlas and Lotus Connections fit into an ambitious push by IBM around social collaboration in enterprises.A growing number of people use multiple networks and would like to easily move their profile data between them. Without providing specifics, Lamb said IBM is moving to address the problem.&quot;That&#39;s something that we&#39;re looking at, how we aggregate that,&quot; he said. &quot;There will be some announcements around the Lotusphere time frame.&quot; Lotusphere is scheduled for Jan. 20-24 in Orlando, Florida.IBM is selling Atlas through its Software Services for Lotus group. Lamb declined to provide specific pricing information.
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TOKYO  - Japan&#39;s Fujitsu and Cisco Systems of the US said they have agreed to form a strategic alliance focusing on routers and switches that will enable businesses to build advanced Internet Protocol (IP) networks.
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(InfoWorld) - Cisco Systems Inc. will open a research center in Ireland to develop unified communications products. The office, announced on Tuesday and to be located in the western city of Galway, will initially employ 50 researchers but is expected to grow to 200 positions in the next three years. The researchers will build new unified communications applications and services, which allow workers to have a single point of access where they can be contacted via a variety of methods such as e-mail, voice mail, VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol), instant messaging and video. Cisco also plans to consider opportunities for collaborative research with industry and academic organizations in Ireland. Cisco currently employs 66 people in local sales and support in Ireland. The networking giant said it is expanding its investment in development around the world in order to be responsive to customer needs. Ireland's available talent pool and positive business climate attracted the company. Ireland's corporate tax rate, the lowest in Europe and among the lowest in the world, began attracting significant numbers of overseas companies about 20 years ago. Since then, other costs, such as energy and salaries, have risen dramatically in Ireland. As a result, the government has begun pursuing research and development investments, like Cisco's, which tend to be less reliant on extremely low operational costs and more focused on available talent than other types of operations, such as manufacturing. Ireland's Industrial Development Agency (IDA), a government body tasked with recruiting overseas companies to Ireland, said it has been courting Cisco for some time. The IDA often offers multimillion euro incentives to companies that choose to open up operations in the country. The agency said it supported the opening of the new center but it did not reveal how much it may have offered Cisco as incentive. The trend toward unified communications is growing as an increasing number of networks support IP. Earlier this year, Cisco began bundling a variety of its products related to voice, e-mail, text, videoconferencing and collaboration under a new Unified Communications System brand. Cisco also recently bought Metreos Corp. and Audium Corp. to make it easier for enterprise developers to integrate applications in the Unified Communications System. Cisco has competition in the space. Microsoft Corp. and Nortel Networks Corp. recently formed an alliance to develop unified communications technologies to enterprise customers.
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Motorola Inc. and Nortel Networks are discussing a joint venture that would combine their wireless network infrastructure divisions, according to a media report.
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The next generation of the Lotus Notes client will integrate with the new range of Web 2.0-inspired technologies released with IBM&#39;s social software, dubbed Lotus Connections.
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The World Series of networking services IBM and Cisco are expanding their Global Services Alliance, er globally.â¦
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IBM is turning to technology from Siemens to help bring Sametime, part of its Lotus Notes messaging and collaboration suite, up to par with Microsofts upcoming Office Communications Server 2007.
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Cisco Systems Inc.  and  International Business Machines Corp.  said on Monday  they will combine technical support services for mutual  customers, highlighting increasingly close ties between the  network equipment maker and computer services company.
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The next version of Lotus Notes and Domino will ship in February and will feature an array of updates, including a new Web 2.0-style feature called My Widgets, IBM said Monday during its Lotusphere show in Orlando, Florida.Lotus users will have a new panel for different types of widgets. Their interaction with the mini-programs will be enhanced through a technology, Live Text, that can analyze text, spot patterns and phrases, and then link them to a widget that could be useful. For example, users could receive information about flights after clicking a flight number in an e-mail, IBM said in a statement.The Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.1 release will also include Lotus Notes Traveler. The application will be able to push e-mail -- including associated content like attachments and calendars -- to Windows Mobile devices, IBM said.In addition, IBM unveiled a new e-mail security appliance, IBM Lotus Protector for Mail Security; and said the fourth beta of its free desktop software suite, Lotus Symphony, will be available by the end of this month.Symphony has seen more than 400,000 users download the English version, IBM said. The software is available in 24 languages overall. IBM said a new plug-in, WebSphere Translation Server, will be available on the Symphony community site. The tool can provide real-time translation of content created in Symphony, according to IBM.IBM also looked further down the road, saying that Lotus Domino Designer 8.5 will feature more Web 2.0-style capabilities, such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) programming, and RSS or ATOM content feeds.The company&#39;s news comes as rival Microsoft is crowing about its success in luring Lotus users to its unified communications and collaboration platform.Also Monday, IBM company also announced its Open Collaboration Client Solution will come in a version compatible with the Linux-based Ubuntu operating system.The Open Collaboration Client Solution bundles together Lotus Notes; the Lotus Sametime messaging platform; Lotus Symphony; WebSphere Portal; the Lotus Connections social networking software; Lotus Quickr, document management and collaboration software for teams; and Lotus Expeditor, an Eclipse-based development environment.In addition, IBM and Red Hat announced a new partnership aimed at SMBs. The companies plan to sell an offering that combines Red Hat&#39;s Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform and Enterprise Linux Desktop with IBM&#39;s Lotus Notes client, Symphony, and Domino server.