Microsoft has announced over the past two days that it will develop Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) interoperability within its Live Communications Server 2005 and communications products from Cisco, Avaya, Alcatel, Mitel Networks Corp., NEC Corp., Nortel Networks Ltd. and Siemens AG .

One customer who uses both Cisco and Microsoft technology said the cooperation, which might lead to products he can use by August, could help improve business efficiency. "It will be huge for us," said Chris Beck, enterprise voice architect at Career Education Corp. in Hoffman Estates, Ill. The company has 17,000 employees with 80 locations, and about half its workers are equipped with IP telephones.

Beck said that having a Cisco server to detect the presence of workers on IP phones and other communications equipment could help drastically reduce the turnaround time on Web inquiries by would-be students seeking information. If the candidates could be called back in 10 minutes instead of 15 minutes or more, it would increase the chance that they would be interested in his company's programs, Beck said. Knowing who was available to return calls would help reduce the call-back time, he added.

Being able to convert interested callers into actual applicants might not matter to students, but it could help Career Education, he said. If internal applications that his company uses can be leveraged for use by customers and potential customers, he noted, "that would be gargantuan for us."

The prospect of Cisco working with Avaya and other tough competitors prompted several IT managers to sing the praises of integration and open standards. One who would not give his name called it "Kumbaya time for IT." But an executive at a of large vendor played down that notion a bit, however, calling the news "Kumbaya lite," since competition is still very much alive.