Cisco Extends Unified Communications Olive Branch

Cisco Systems is joining a slew of other vendors supporting interoperability in unified communications with the release of a new protocol for its TelePresence systems that allows interoperability between vendors, according to the company.

Cisco has offered to license the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) royalty-free to UC vendors.  LifeSize, Tandberg (which Cisco purchased late last year) and Radvision have already signed agreements to license TIP.

The move is an attempt by Cisco to keep up with the growing ranks of UC vendors that support an open standards environment, including Polycom, Avaya and others. Cisco’s TelePresence systems are built on top of proprietary code; TIP will enable Telepresence systems to communicate with other vendors’ UC systems.

Cisco does have some other interoperability through H.323, which enables TelePresence technology to work with other videoconferencing systems and collaboration applications.