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Cisco And Citrix Collaborate To Unify Communications And Business Applications

Monday, 06 March 2006 by Michel Roth

Citrix and Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced that they are working together to integrate presence and call processing capabilities into a broad range of enterprise applications that have been deployed with Citrix Application Delivery solutions. The relationship will offer tested, packaged IP solutions, without the cost, complexity and risk of custom projects. In addition, this solution will provide a rich, Session-Initiation-Protocol(SIP)-based, collaborative experience allowing employees to communicate more effectively and solve business problems more quickly.

The relationship between Cisco and Citrix will initially be centered on the integration of the Citrix Application Gateway� and the Citrix� Voice Office suite of applications with Cisco Unified CallManager and Cisco Unified Presence Server. The combined solution will add SIP-based user presence information and dialing capabilities to Citrix Voice Office applications on Cisco IP telephones and enterprise applications using Citrix Smart Agent technology, a component of the Citrix Voice Office suite of communication applications delivered to users of IP telephone and PC�s.

Citrix Smart Agent provides a link between the telephone and computer, enabling users to dial their telephone by simply clicking on telephone numbers within e-mails, applications and information that can be accessed using Internet Explorer. With Smart Agent, customers will be able to utilize click-to-call, with presence, for applications deployed on the users PC and/or deployed on Citrix�s Application Delivery solutions.

Users will now start to see presence information in applications deployed on their IP telephone screen and their PC or laptop. Key benefits of ensuring presence and availability are:

� The communications process is streamlined, eliminating time spent trying to reach someone who is unavailable.
� Users will have immediate access to knowledge and information sources. Delays due to ineffective communications will become minimal.
� Users will have more business agility to engage in other time-sensitive business processes such as responding to customer needs and improving time-to-market.

Cisco and Citrix will be demonstrating the presence-enabled applications during the VoiceCon Conference in Orlando, Fla. Integrated products are targeted for release in the second half of 2006. Citrix will add voice access to its access infrastructure solutions and will offer these solutions through the Citrix partner channel in the latter part of the year. The Citrix Application Gateway and the Citrix Voice Office suite of applications will be offered to Cisco customers through the Cisco Solutions Plus program.

Read the full press release here.