The new 2009 release will enable intercompany collaboration among business partners, suppliers and customers, according to Barry O'Sullivan, senior vice president of Cisco's Voice Technology group. Currently, Cisco's Unified Communications System 7.0, which was , enables companies to collaborate internally. "In 2009, you'll see business-to-business unified communications" from Cisco, O'Sullivan said. "We have 60,000 customers and there's a huge opportunity to connect them all over the Internet."

O'Sullivan made his remarks during an interview at Cisco's C-Scape analyst conference here this week.

Unified communications companies are currently hammering out standards for intercompany collaboration, O'Sullivan says. But those efforts will take a while, and Cisco will ship a prestandard intercompany version of its Unified Communications Systems next year, he says.

The software will let IT organizations configure security and quality of service policies for communications with companies they trust, O'Sullivan says. It will employ the Session Initiation Protocol for call set up and allow companies to establish presence "federations" for groups of collaborative workers.

Cisco's WebEx Connect product, which also debuted last September, will be the tool by which these companies can federate, O'Sullivan says.