Cisco Systems, Inc. and NEC Corp.
Wednesday united to propel the use of Internet-based voice technologies
within business organizations.
As part of the alliance, Cisco, a
leader in Internet networking, and NEC, a developer of communication
products, will work to achieve a smooth integration of NEC communications
products including private branch exchanges (PBXs), applications and devices
with products based on Cisco technology.
Users of a PBX share a certain number of outside lines for making
telephone calls external to the PBX.
“We are working together to build applications that interoperate within each other’s architecture,” noted a Cisco spokesperson. “In essence, we are creating a path to help people easily migrate from PBX to all-IP.”
The partnership is noteworthy, stated Kazunori Kiuchi, associate senior
vice president and executive general manager of NEC Networks. “The alliance
between two global leaders in data and telecommunications in the enterprise
area network provides customers with true, converged multiservice networks,”
he said.
“NEC’s prominent global position in the telecom industry, combined with
Cisco’s IP leadership for voice and data services, delivers an entirely new
level of investment protection to our customers, providing an assured
migration path to IP telephony and interoperability with Cisco’s IP
architecture.”
Key to the partnership is Cisco’s AVVID (which standards for Architecture
for Voice, Video and Integrated Data.) This architecture encompasses
converged client devices, infrastructure hardware/software, directory
services, call processing, telephony/data applications, management, service
and support.
AVVID is designed to provide customers with the tools required to evolve
their disparate data, voice, and video networks into a single converged
infrastructure. It is the backbone of the Cisco CallManager, which is the
software-based call-processing component of the Cisco IP telephony solution.
The software extends enterprise telephony features and functions to
packet telephony network devices such as IP phones, media processing
devices, voice-over-IP (VoIP) gateways, and multimedia applications.
The collaboration includes global sales and marketing programs,
interoperability verification between products from both companies, and the
creation of applications in the areas of call control, media integration, IP
phones and computer telephony.
NEC’s worldwide channel and systems integration resources will be used
for installation and ongoing support of the solutions.
The companies are additionally sharing development information. “We are bringing together the strengths of two companies and are working together to create applications, such as call-forwarding features,” the Cisco spokesperson said.
