Cisco partners with Citrix and Microsoft to bring IM-like presence and click-to-call capabilities to their hosted and desktop applications For better or worse, voice has escaped the telephone and is weaving its way into the fabric of enterprise applications. According to Gartner, by 2010, 80 percent of companies will have integrated voice and messaging into some business applications or processes.Cisco gave that trend another push last week at the VoiceCon conference, when the company unveiled its Cisco Unified Communications system, a big enterprise bundle that includes voice, e-mail, text, collaboration, videoconferencing, and IM-style presence capabilities. Shortly after, the company announced separate partnerships with Citrix and Microsoft to integrate telephony with their network and desktop applications.Microsoft will integrate its Office Communicator 2005 and SIP-based Office Live Communications Server with Cisco’s new unified system. The integrated technology will support “click-to-call” capability and the ability to transfer computer or desk phone calls from Office Communicator. Murli Thirumale, group vice president of Citrix Gateways, said Citrix was collaborating with Cisco to voice-enable a range of its hosted enterprise applications, including on-demand CRM provider Salesforce.com.“These two worlds — applications and telephony — have largely been separate,” Thirumale said. “There are many IT managers around the world who want to voice-enable their apps.”Thirumale added that the relationship would first focus on integration of its Citrix Application Gateway and Office Voice products with Cisco’s bundle. The combination will provide the SIP-based user presence and click-to-call capabilities. Microsoft expects to introduce its converged products in August; Citrix said it will follow in the second half of this year. Technology Industry