Cisco Systems Inc.
and VocalTec Communications Ltd.
Wednesday began a joint venture to develop interoperability between their
IP telephony solutions.
They will be using the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) H.323
Version 2 international standard as a model for their applications. As more
vendors enter the industry, the two companies felt it was important to
develop solutions with flexible platforms.
“VocalTec continues to fulfill our goal to bring to market comprehensive
standards-based IP telephony solutions that manage networks, route traffic
and support enhanced multimedia services in multi-vendor environments,”
said Elon Ganor, chairman at VocalTec Communications.
“By pursuing interoperability with market leaders such as Cisco Systems,
and providing VocalTec IP telephony solutions on multiple platforms,
VocalTec is meeting carrier and corporate customer needs for flexible
high-performance solutions.”
The first phase will interoperate the intelligence of the carrier-grade
VocalTec Gatekeeper with Cisco gateways including the Cisco
AccessPath-VS3, AS5300, 3600 series and 2600 series. The second phase of
this project will focus on interoperability between the two companies’
complete product sets including gateways, gatekeepers, conferencing servers
and clients.
Field trials are expected to start in the fourth quarter with shipping
product available in the first half of 1999.
“Cisco considers interoperability to be crucial to the success of packet
telephony,” said Alistair Woodman, product line
manager for packet telephony applications at Cisco Systems. “We have
recently stepped up our interoperability testing efforts
and are pleased to be working with other market leaders like VocalTec.”
