"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.