Intel and Siemens Collaborate on Second Generation VoIP

Intel Corporation and Siemens Communications today announced the establishment of a technology relationship between the two companies that includes an agreement to work collaboratively to create open unified communications solutions based on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The two companies have agreed to jointly fund and cooperatively conduct research focused on secure wireless networks and real-time open unified communications in the short term as well as work together longer term to create comprehensive vertical industry collaboration solutions to drive business process optimization for key market segments such as telecommunications service providers, financial services and digital healthcare.

Additional components of the agreement call for the two companies to establish joint market development efforts focused on the enterprise and service provider sectors. The overall goal of the joint effort is to demonstrate real time communications solutions for business process optimization using Intel architecture such as Intel® dual-core technology and carrier class Rack Mounted Servers (RMS) from Intel and the HiPath 8000 and OpenScape™ from Siemens. The first step is to demonstrate the OpenScape platform running applications such as Personal Portal, Unified Communications, Video and Voice Conferencing and Mobile Clients. Intel and Siemens expect to present findings and display the first wave of technology solutions developed at the Intel lab to selected customers by the fourth quarter of 2006.

"Intel's experience as the leading provider of silicon technology to the enterprise market world wide and established track record of industry collaboration puts it in a great position to shape the enterprise of the future" said Gordon Graylish, vice president of the sales and marketing group and general manager of Europe, Middle-East and Africa (EMEA). "As a result of this collaboration, enterprise customers will be able to avail themselves of unified communications based on the industry's highest performance and most cost effective architecture."

"Siemens has a strong commitment to this joint development effort and to ongoing collaboration with Intel to unlock the potential of our open communication enterprise solutions to a global ecosystem of third party independent software providers and systems integrators" said Thomas Zimmermann, president, Enterprise Systems, Siemens Communications. "Growth potential for the open unified communications market is significant. Our own customer base for the HiPath 8000 solution has more than doubled since the first quarter of the year, and Siemens is adding a new HiPath 8000 customer nearly every week."

"The Intel lab will also act as a center for the optimization and integration of products from independent software vendors (ISVs) and other third party systems to work with the new open unified communication VoIP technologies. Additionally, Siemens and Intel plan to jointly optimize and prepare Siemens' software portfolio based on Intel® dual-core technology and Intel® virtualization technology to provide highest performance scalability and flexible capacity for future performance growth regarding user updates and functional additions to be rolled out worldwide."

More than 50 new features are being added to the HiPath 8000 solution. The system now supports up to 1,000 different dial-plans in every business group, providing flexibility for migrating Siemens and non-Siemens systems and numbering plans to HiPath 8000. The solution also enables managed service providers (MSPs) to give flexibility to their customers. Attendants can now use the ProCenter™ ACD system for providing comprehensive features across a branch or across a whole enterprise. To make Executive/Assistant teams more effective, the Executive/Assistant and key system functionality have been significantly extended to provide efficient team collaboration for busy management groups, offices and consultant teams. The system now has improved encryption and network security, even greater interworking with proprietary and legacy platforms (especially the HiPath 4000), and SOA-based components for the solution's management and media server features. Additional SOA interfaces and components are planned for 2007 and beyond.

For further information contact: