IP telephony meets collaboration

Bridging presence awareness with IP telephony, multiple communication devices, and applications, Siemens Information and Communication Networks this week is rolling out Version 2.0 of its HiPath OpenScape collaboration portal.

OpenScape is communications middleware designed to give users a unified communications experience by providing a single dashboard from which to manage real-time availability and preferred devices, according to Stefan Merz, director of OpenScape marketing at Siemens.

Based on SIP, SIMPLE (SIP for IM and Presence Leveraging Extensions), and Web services protocols, OpenScape can be integrated into a variety of applications and databases, Merz said.

“Information workers get the same message in multiple devices because there is no integration layer. [OpenScape] gives the ability to communicate via presence using multiple devices,” Merz said. “It is not focused on one device but integrates all the different devices and tools workers use.”

Because the portal is built on open standards it can integrate with voice environments from different vendors including Avaya, Cisco Systems, and Nortel Networks, company officials said. OpenScape requires Microsoft Windows 2003 and Live Communications Server.

New in Version 2.0 is a Web Services Toolkit for developers, which provides a SIP- and SOAP-based open application environment for tying OpenScape to existing applications.

Also in 2.0, telephony presence-awareness capabilities are extended to include any preferred device in use, even devices without SIP support. In addition, a new Tell Me When feature monitors presence status changes for urgent contacts and the voice portal gains natural speech recognition.

Uniting IP telephony with user presence awareness and calendar information lets workers change how they communicate, said Jeffrey Snyder, research vice president at Gartner.

With OpenScape, “someone dials your extension and wherever you happen to be, your phone will ring,” Snyder said. “This is the beginning of a new set of applications [for] enterprises that enhance communications based on IP technology.”