Cisco to ship TIP on Tandberg

Interoperability protocol to be available on newly-acquired systems in July

Cisco this week said it is fulfilling a pledge to foster interoperability between its own and other vendors' telepresence systems by integrating the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) on the Tandberg TelePresence Server. TIP on Tandberg will be available in July, Cisco says.

Cisco closed on its acquisition of Tandberg, the Norwegian market leader in videoconferencing, in mid-April. Months before then, Cisco announced intentions to license TIP royalty-free to the industry to foster multivendor telepresence interoperability (could TIP have been a condition Cisco had to meet before being able to close the Tandberg acquisition and becoming the market leader in videoconferencing?).

In addition to shipping TIP, Cisco also rolled out other telepresence and collaboration enhancements to extend the appeal of its products.  They include Movi for Mac client and other Movi enhancements designed to foster mobile video collaboration between Mac and PC users. Cisco says Movi is also the first of its TelePresence products to integrate ClearPath, a feature designed to improve resolution for video users on suboptimal networks by minimizing the effects of packet loss.

Other Movi enhancements include Far End Camera Control, to remotely control cameras in environments like telemedicine; Multiway, which enables ad hoc multiparty telepresence calls; and the ICE protocol, which increases call capacity outside the firewall for large-scale installations.

For smaller and midsize customers, Cisco unveiled TelePresence Commercial Express, which combines three components -- TelePresence Manager, TelePresence Multipoint Switch and TelePresence Recording Server -- onto one VMware server for simpler licensing and easier deployment.

Cisco also rolled out new software releases for the MSE 8000 video and audio engine that triples the capacity of multipoint conferences - up to 48 screens in a multiscreen call and up to 60 screens in a single-screen multipoint call. Cisco is also integrating the Tandberg inTouch touch screen interface with the Tandberg C Series Profile products.  

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• Cisco

• Tandberg

• Telepresence

• videoconferencing