Cisco customers are crying out for integration with Microsoft's unified communications gear, according to Cisco, but it appears Microsoft is hesitant to give much away that would ease such integration.

In a meeting with reporters on Tuesday to expand on the collaborative work that was promised by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Cisco CEO John Chambers, Rick McConnell, Cisco's executive sponsor of the partnership in the unified communications area said Cisco now federates all the presence and availability information from its unified communications systems and publishes that data to Microsoft's Office Communications Server. OCS can then push it to Microsoft clients but Microsoft doesn't reciprocate.

According to a story by IDG News Service, if an enterprise uses Cisco's Unified Communications Manager call control software and an employee picks up the phone, a colleague's Microsoft Office Communicator messaging client will show that employee as being on the phone. But if an employee indicated in Office Communicator that she was away from her desk, that information wouldn't show up on a colleague's Cisco IP phone. Making federated presence work both ways will make that possible, McConnell said.

Apparently Microsoft has "taken limited steps to share users' presence and availabilty information," for fear of losing its ability to own all of the client.

Someone should tell Chambers that in reality it's not so easy working with Microsoft.

Go to Cisco Subnet for more Cisco news, blogs, discussion forums, security alerts, book giveaways, and more.

Recent Cisconet blog entries

Subscribe to Network World's Cisco News Alert, which includes a weekly digest of all Cisco Subnet items

Click to read the article this is in response to.