I came across a Network World article on how Cisco is adding IM software as a basic feature of their UC offering. I think this is interesting news. Basically, Cisco is going to include Jabber and their Unified Presence Server (CUPS) at no extra charge to customers that have Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM).
Customers who have CUCM 7.1 and above will get Jabber IM client and CUPS. It sounds like this won't be limited to users with IP phones. So, if you have a telephony solution that has a mix of call processing solutions (CUCM and Avaya, for example) you will be able to offer presence and IM features to all enterprise users. IOW, you don't need to have an IP phone or CUWL user license to make the IM and Presence capabilities available to your enterprise users.
My understanding is that we are talking IM and presence here - not voice and video services. These will likely be optional features that customers can add where and when it makes sense.
I think this is a good play and a necessary move to competitively position CUPS/Jabber against MS Lync. Also, I have had this sneaking suspicion that presence capabilities may one day be built into the CUCM application (does anyone remember the Unified Mobility server?). I am just speculating here but it isn't what one could call completely unfounded.
Thanks for reading. If you have time, post a comment!
I just wanted to dump a quick blog on using FindMe configurations on the Cisco Video Communications Server (VCS) Express Starter Kit. I was doing some testing with FindMe and realized pretty quickly that I may want to RTFM a little more. I thought the quick troubleshooting exercise may be of interest to someone out there in bitLand!
I was recently pondering my first opportunity to design and deploy video communication solutions [back when it was known as Videoteleconferencing (VTC)]. I was thinking about what people wanted from the technology. How they wanted to interface with the technology and the other video users out there over their ISDN (H.320) or IP (H.323) networks. Lots of things about the technology have changed, but the use case has not. People use video for the promise of interacting with people visually over a great distance. Moreover, people want to collaborate over video.
In this blog, I wanted to go on a tour down memory lane with the collaboration aspect of good ol' VTC IPVC telepresence(?). Whatever you want to call it, here we'll call it video. We are going to discuss the ITU-T's T.120 and H.239 Recommendations as well as the IETF's Binary Floor Control Protocol (BFCP) and associated proposals.
