VOICECON - Citrix, Cisco converge on voice apps

06.03.2006
Fresh on the heels of Cisco announcing it had bundled a number of its communications products, Citrix said Monday it was collaborating with the networking giant to integrate telephony into its hosted enterprise applications range.

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.