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Today, at the VoiceCon 2006 conference, Cisco Systems and Microsoft Corp. announced they are working together to provide collaborative real-time capabilities for businesses through the integration of Microsoft® Office Communicator 2005 and the open Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 with the new SIP-based Cisco Unified Communications system.
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The new communications solution from Cisco and Microsoft will allow customers to do the following:• Click to call as well as transfer phone calls from Office Communicator, eliminating the need for users to act as human middleware
• Launch or answer a phone call from within Office Communicator, and choose to conduct the call from a computer or a desk phone
• View Cisco Unified IP Phone presence status from within Office Communicator, providing users with an expanded view of presence information
• Transparently escalate between Office Communicator instant messaging and voice sessions, enabling users to communicate more effectively
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This phase of the Cisco and Microsoft interoperability solution is expected to be generally available in August 2006 for new installations and upgrades to existing customers.
But Cisco isn’t Microsoft’s only partner:
Today at the VoiceCon Spring 2006 conference, Microsoft Corp. announced growing industry support for Microsoft® Office Live Communications Server 2005 as a hub for unified communications solutions that provide rich capabilities to allow people, teams and organizations to communicate simply and effectively while integrating seamlessly with business applications and processes. Microsoft is focused on extending the rich capabilities of presence and people-centric communications to encompass voice and apply the power of desktop software and software platforms to improve and advance communications.
To this end, Microsoft is collaborating with telephony companies to enable further integration between business desktop phones and the rich collaboration environment on the PC, allowing customers to more effectively communicate in real time. Microsoft is working with Alcatel, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel and Siemens to enable Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based interoperability between voice communications solutions and Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 and Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile, the PC and mobile phone unified communications clients for Live Communications Server. The solutions will enable business customers to launch and answer private branch exchange (PBX) and Internet protocol-PBX (IP-PBX) phone calls and view phone presence state from within Office Communicator. They also allow customers to seamlessly switch between instant messaging and voice sessions.
And Microsoft isn’t Cisco’s only partner:
Cisco Systems is bundling up its tools for all kinds of communication in enterprises and giving the set an appropriately broad brand name: the Cisco Unified Communications system.
The range of products covers voice, e-mail, text, collaboration, and videoconferencing capabilities, as well as the ability to reach the right person on the first try on matter what device they are using through presence technology. It builds on Cisco’s current lineup offered under the IP Communications banner, namely its CallManager, Unity, MeetingPlace, and IP Contact Center products, and adds three major new software products as well as new features.
More details by following the link, but here’s the nut:
Though it is still immature, SIP will emerge as a glue that will let enterprises combine communication platforms and applications from many vendors, said Forrester Research analyst Elizabeth Herrell.
“SIP is going to force these vendors to stop being so proprietary,” Herrell said. Cisco and other network players are emphasizing overall systems but they are also open to cooperation with software vendors such as Microsoft and IBM, she added.
“They want a common platform, but I’m not sure all the applications on that platform will be theirs,” Herrell said.
The San Jose, California, company also is deepening cooperation with Nokia for mobile IP calling at enterprise sites, allowing a softphone client being developed by Nokia to register as a client on CallManager. This will let employees use the softphone as they would a conventional enterprise phone, with features such as four-digit extensions.
Randy Cook, director of global voice networks at Oracle, welcomes Cisco’s adoption of SIP for call control. Use of the standard, instead of a proprietary protocol used previously, will allow for tighter integration with third-party software such as Oracle’s own applications, he said.
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Another good move on Monday will be the introduction of CallManager on a Linux-based hardware platform, Cook said. The appliance will run a hardened version of Linux based on a Red Hat’s distribution of the open-source OS. He would like to move the software off Windows to a more stable OS that is less plagued by viruses, he said.
It looks like anyone’s game at this point and everyone is playing.
China Martens at InfoWorld:
A group of more than 35 U.S. and international IT vendors, organizations, academic institutions and industry bodies is due to announce the formation of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) Alliance Friday.
The new body, whose initial members include IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems, will focus on further evangelizing the OpenDocument electronic file format.
Open Document Format for Office Applications, also known as OpenDocument, is being developed by the OASIS standards body as an XML (extensible markup language) file format. The format covers text, spreadsheets and other document types created by office productivity suites. Supporters of OpenDocument include offerings from open-source players and Sun’s StarOffice and IBM’s Workplace software suites.
The ODF Alliance has formed under the auspices of trade association the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). Other IT vendors in the alliance include Corel, EMC, Novell, and Red Hat.
There’s more in the article, including how the alliance would have aided Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn in his fight for Open Document. The ODF Alliance web site is now online and has more information.
William Echikson from Dow Jones:
In an escalation of their battle to wield antitrust law to rein in Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), a group of rival software makers Wednesday filed a new complaint with European regulators aimed at stopping it from bundling products with its Windows software.
In a statement, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, whose members include International Business Machines (IBM), Nokia Corp. (NOK) and Oracle Corp. (ORCL), said it had “filed a complaint with the European Commission against a range of Microsoft business practices that threaten to deny enterprises and individual consumers real choice among competing software products.”
It said it wanted to stop Microsoft from bundling new products that would “reinforce Microsoft’s existing monopolies and extend its market dominance into a range of existing and pre-announced future product areas.” It cited Microsoft “dominant Office productivity applications.”
“Today’s complaint brings to the European Commission’s attention anticompetitive Microsoft practices in a growing number of areas,” said Simon Awde, Chairman of ECIS. “These include bundling and interface non-disclosure practices similar to those that the Commission declared illegal in its 2004 decision.
Although a new complaint from rivals was expected, the move guarantees months if not years of new legal wrangling for Microsoft. European regulators are obliged to investigate the new complaint.
Microsoft response:
Spokesman Tom Brookes said the company had “come to expect” complaints from competitors when it introduces new products.
The ECIS association “is a front for IBM and a few other competitors who constantly seek to use the regulatory process to their business advantage,” Brookes said in a statement. “When faced with innovation, they choose litigation,” he said.
Microsoft “will respond quickly and comprehensively to any requests for information from the Commission on this complaint, but no such requests have been received so far,” Brookes added.
The new complaint focuses on the difficulties of making rival software work well with the Microsoft Windows operating system. Rivals say they need more information from Microsoft to enable that to happen.
In Wednesday’s complaint, the ECIS pointed to Microsoft Office software an example of a Microsoft product that doesn’t permit rivals to interoperate properly with the Windows operating system.
The addition of client software interoperability complaints is new and potentially much more burdensome for Microsoft. On the other hand, nothing moves fast in the corridors of the EU bureaucracy so this story will be with us for quite a while.
Update: It’s not just Office but Vista too as Simon Taylor reports at InfoWorld:
A coalition called the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (E.C.I.S.), which includes vendors such as IBM, Nokia, Oracle, RealNetworks, and Red Hat, announced that it had made a formal complaint to the Commission over a “range of products present and future.” The reference to future products is understood to be Microsoft’s Vista desktop operating system, due for release later this year.
One example of the issues raised in the complaint is Microsoft’s refusal to disclose interoperability information for its Office suite, a lawyer representing ECIS said. By refusing to provide data such as the file formats for .doc, .xls, and .ppt documents, the company prevents other applications suites such as OpenOffice and StarOffice from achieving full compatibility, according to attorney Thomas Vinje, acting for ECIS. “This has crucial implications for Linux on desktops,” Vinje said.
