Cisco Systems and Vocaltec IP Telephony Solutions to Interoperate
November 12, 1998
SAN JOSE, Calif. and HERZLIYA, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE) Nov. 11, 1998--Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and VocalTec Communications Ltd. (Nasdaq: VOCLF) today announced that the two companies are developing interoperability between their IP telephony solutions based on the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) H.323 Version 2 international standard.
The first phase of the interoperability development, currently underway, will interoperate the intelligence of the carrier-grade VocalTec Gatekeeper(TM) with Cisco gateways including the Cisco AccessPath-VS3, AS5300, 3600 series and 2600 series. The second phase of this project will focus on interoperability between the two companies' complete product sets including gateways, gatekeepers, conferencing servers and clients. Field trials are expected to start in the fourth quarter of 1998 with shipping product available in the first half of 1999.
"Cisco considers interoperability to be crucial to the success of packet telephony," said Alistair Woodman, product line manager for packet telephony applications at Cisco Systems. "We have recently stepped up our interoperability testing efforts and are pleased to be working with other market leaders like VocalTec."
"VocalTec continues to fulfill our goal to bring to market comprehensive standards-based IP telephony solutions that manage networks, route traffic and support enhanced multimedia services in multi-vendor environments," said Dr. Elon Ganor, chairman at VocalTec Communications. "By pursuing interoperability with market leaders such as Cisco Systems, and providing VocalTec IP telephony solutions on multiple platforms, VocalTec is meeting carrier and corporate customer needs for flexible high performance solutions. "
"Multi-vendor solutions are crucial for the success of this industry, " said Hans Albert Aukes, senior executive director at Deutsche Telekom. "We believe that IP telephony will be a dominant platform for the communications industry and that H.323 provides a strong standard for the development of interoperable solutions for this industry."
"This announcement between Cisco and VocalTec demonstrates a commitment by both companies to offer their customers standards based solutions," said Bob Goodwin, senior vice president, Killen & Associates. "The marketplace must applaud any efforts between major vendors to ensure interoperability of their products. This positions both companies well for continued leadership in offering IP telephony solutions."
Cisco Voice Gateways
Cisco's portfolio of voice-over-IP (VoIP) enabled gateway products includes the Cisco 2600, Cisco 3600, Cisco AS5300 and the Cisco AccessPath(TM) VS3 access system. The Cisco 2600 and Cisco 3600 are scaleable multiservice routers providing solutions for the integration of data, voice and video in branch offices and are often deployed as managed service customer premise equipment. The Cisco AS5300 VoIP gateway is a high-performance H.323-compliant gateway optimized for VoIP applications.
About the VocalTec Ensemble Architecture
The VocalTec Ensemble Architecture(TM) is the first open IP telephony platform to support the most advanced industry standards for widescale, secure and reliable IP telephony services. With support for third-party accounting, billing and security solutions, it provides the framework for quality, intelligent IP telephony services and centralized management solutions for the routing of traffic between thousands of gateways and gatekeepers, network management agents and millions of end-user devices, including PC clients, standard telephones and other communications devices.
About VocalTec Communications
VocalTec Communications software enables audio, video, data, text and collaborative communications between personal computers and other devices over IP networks. VocalTec is a leader in developing innovative, open standards products that bridge IP networks and the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) and drive the convergence of computing and telephone technologies. For the latest company information, visit VocalTec on the World Wide Web at vocaltec.com.
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