Cisco links disparate UC systems across the Internet

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 23 March 2010 17:37

Business IT - Technology

Cisco has staged the first demonstration of its Intercompany Media Engine (IME) - a new product designed to provide seamless integration between different companies' unified communications systems across the public Internet.

The demonstration was staged between Queensland Rail and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Cisco claims that "Through the IME all participants were able to spontaneously, simultaneously and with high security enjoy enterprise video and high-fidelity wideband audio from their video-enabled devices by simply dialing standard phone numbers."

Barry O'Sullivan, senior vice president, Cisco Voice Technology Group, said: "We believe that IME is the most disruptive communications technology developed in more than a decade." However Cisco gave no indication that the IME was able to support communication between UC systems from vendors other than Cisco.

Australia loomed large in Cisco's IME announcement. In addition to Queensland Rail's involvement, the announcement quoted Dimension Data Australia CEO, Steve Nola, and James Sankar, director of applications and services for AARNet:

Nola said: "We see a tremendous value for our clients because the technology will enable them to take voice and video collaboration to the next level while leveraging their current unified communications investments."

Sankar said: "Our primary motivation for trialling Cisco Intercompany Media Engine was to enable and assess the performance, quality and usability of rich video and collaboration internally and among our university partners, which initially includes shareholder CSIRO."

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