The first such convergence of features would include instant-messaging-like presence capabilities and "click to call" capabilities into applications it hosted, such as Salesforce.com, Murli Thirumale, group vice president of Citrix Gateways, told InfoWorld.com.
The Cisco Unified Communications system, to be announced at the VoiceCon conference in Orlando, Fla., this week includes voice, e-mail, text, collaboration, videoconferencing, as well as the instant messaging-like presence capabilities.
"These two worlds -- applications and telephony -- have largely been separate," Thirumale said. "There are many IT managers around the world who want to voice-enable their apps."
Gartner Research expects that by 2010, 80 percent of companies will have integrated communications such as voice and messaging into some business applications or processes, Citrix cited.
The Citrix-Cisco relationship would offer firms tested, packaged IP solutions, without the cost, complexity and risk of custom products, Citrix said.
It said the relationship would first focus on integration of its Citrix Application Gateway and Office Voice products with Cisco's Unified Call Manager and Unified Presence Server. The combination will provide the SIP-based user presence and "click to call" capabilities to Voice Office on Cisco IP telephones and enterprise applications with Smart Agent technology.
Elizabeth Herrell, vice president at Forrester Research, said companies were looking for such integration to "eliminate a lot of the steps that slows businesses down."
She said delays due to ineffective communications were eroding worker productivity. Better real-time accessibility of colleagues and customers, such as with presence and click to call, improved responsiveness.
Citrix's Thirumale said integrating voice with applications at the desktop level was happening widely, but blending voice capabilities with hosted enterprise applications at this scale was a big step.
He said it was going to be a challenge to merge enterprise apps with the latest voice features.
"There are a bunch of technical things [needed] to make all of this work," he said.
The company will be demonstrating the integrated services this week at VoiceCon, and expects to make the offerings available in the second half of this year.