Cisco Revamps VoIP

Both vendors will showcase their updates at VoiceCon Spring 2006 in Orlando, Fla., this week.

Cisco is set to launch Cisco Unified Communications, the next generation of its VoIP platform that upgrades its entire VoIP lineup and has been nearly two years in the making. With the launch, Cisco for the first time adds native SIP support, giving users presence capabilities, improved mobility features and the ability to support third-party SIP-based phones, said Richard McLeod, director of unified communications for worldwide channels at Cisco, San Jose, Calif.

The launch includes Unified CallManager 5.0, the upgrade to the vendor’s call-processing platform, as well as the introduction of a new Linux-based appliance version of Unified CallManager 5.0. Other new products include Unified Presence Server, which collects status and availability data from users’ devices and feeds it to Cisco applications, and the Unified Personal Communicator, the platform’s “buddy list”-style user interface, which can be displayed on a PC or an IP phone.

“[The addition of SIP support] is going to change the whole way we communicate,” said Jerry Bailey, president and COO of Digitel, an Atlanta-based Cisco channel partner. “Business will be presence-based, wherever you are,” he said.

Bailey is projecting growth for Digitel of approximately 25 percent this year compared to 2005, an expansion that will be driven heavily by Cisco’s new VoIP wares.

Solution providers said the lack of native SIP support had been a hole in Cisco’s VoIP strategy, one which competitors that already include built-in SIP have tried to use against the vendor.

“Customers will feel more comfortable that it’s compatible with the standard,” said John Breakey, CEO of Cisco channel partner Unis Lumin, Oakville, Ontario.

Cisco also is launching new cost-saving communications application bundles that, together with the new products, should help partners increase the back-end rebates they get through its popular Value Incentive Program, McLeod said. Pricing for the new wares, some shipping now, others slated for spring and summer, was not immediately available.

Avaya, Basking Ridge, N.J., meanwhile, is overhauling its MultiVantage Communications Applications suite with advanced survivability, increased mobility and expanded SIP support and is launching a new peer-to-peer VoIP product for the SMB market dubbed Avaya one-X.

The new SMB lineup includes one-X Quick Edition, a plug-and-play SIP-based system for offices with fewer than 20 phones. The list price per phone ranges from $485 to $585 and includes an IP phone with embedded software, available now.