VoiceCon: Verizon Business advances partnerships with Microsoft and Cisco

Verizon Business is aiming to be the one-stop shop for all your communications needs by partnering up with technology leaders like Microsoft and Cisco, and services outfits like Accenture. Today at VoiceCon Orlando it announces closer relationships with Microsoft and Cisco.

Verizon IP Trunking is now certified by Microsoft to work with its Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The technical benefits and cost savings associated with SIP trunking need no further emphasis. According to my briefing with Tom Dalrymple, Product Management Director of Global Voice Solutions at Verizon, what customers will get out of this the most is that Microsoft will offer tech support to Verizon customers who implemented its IP trunking with OCS. And as the press release points out, Aspect is mentioned as an early adopter — not surprising considering Microsoft has some equity interest in the company.

In the area of video conferencing the company partners with Cisco to offer Verizon Immersive Video Conferencing Service for Cisco TelePresence — quite a mouthful when placing the order. This is definitely the high-end spectrum of video conferencing — Cisco equipment and over Verizon’s dedicated network — and should serve large corporations well. If you are a jetless CEO in NYC who needs to speak to somebody in Syndney, Australia, then this could work out for you as long as you remember to shave and tidy up (remember, high-definition video). In my pre-VoiceCon briefing with Roberta Mackintosh, Product Management Director of Global Unified Communications and Collaboration, I’d made a note that Verizon specifically built the network so that it would scale both ways (up and down) in anticipation of future interoperability between telepresence products, which is something that Cisco supposedly is advocating. This trend is definitely something to watch out for as BT has also invested in such a “unified” video conferencing network.

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Tagged as: aspect, cisco, microsoft, office communications server, sip, telepresence, verizon, voicecon