LiteScape Introduces Unified Communications Solution

By Patrick Barnard

TMCnet Associate Editor

 

LiteScape Technologies has reportedly unveiled a unified communications solution which “bridges the connection between existing enterprise communication infrastructure, such as PBX or IP-PBX and IP phones from vendors including Cisco, Avaya (News - Alert), Nortel, Asterisk, Siemens and Nokia (News - Alert), with hosted or deployed collaboration products, such as Microsoft (News - Alert) Live Communication Server, WebEx, IBM (News - Alert) SameTime, MS LiveMeeting and MS Exchange.”

According to a press release, the comprehensive solution will serve as a “launching pad” for the Microsoft/IBM collaboration on IP phones and mobile devices. It enables LiteScape’s OnCast product to provide “one click” collaboration connectivity for Cisco, Avaya or Polycom SIP Phones and Nokia and Motorola (News - Alert) mobile devices.

“There’s a lot of talk about unified communications, but there are few solutions available that provide a truly ubiquitous bridge to connect the enterprise, hosted solutions and multiple devices,” said Rod Hamlin, executive vice president of sales and marketing at LiteScape Technologies, in the press release. “Our position in the market is further validated by Cisco’s recent acquisition of Metreos which extends their IP-PBX telephony.”



Cisco announced on June 30 that it had completed the acquisition of Metreos Corp. and Audium Corp., two privately held companies which offer easy to use, drag and drop, application creation/integration environments. Cisco claims these environments will help strengthen its Service Oriented Network Architecture (SONA).

“With these acquisitions, Cisco will help enable its ecosystem of development partners to easily create and deploy applications that integrate Cisco’s Unified Communications solutions with value-added business applications,” a press release on Cisco’s website states. “The result is more effective communications and streamlined business processes.”

LiteScape claims its new solution allows “the click-to-call conference and broadcast feature in MS-Office Communicator to route requests to a Cisco or Avaya PBX for termination.” In addition, it provides a set of remote call-control capabilities.

The overall goal is to create collaboration “that works with various communication vendor and version products, such as Microsoft Active Directory, MS-LCS, Open LDAP, SQL-based directories, MS-Exchange, Oracle and IBM SameTime.”

Devices that are supported include Cisco, Avaya and Polycom SIP phones’ legacy and IP speakers (such as Bogan and Valcom); and mobile devices from such vendors as Nokia and Motorola.

Security is handled by LiteScape’s Secure Profile Management (SPM) solution, which provides integration with LiteScape’s Secure Personal Authentication Reader (SPAR). SPAR leverages multi-factor authentication using RFID, biometrics, magnetic, bar-code and smart cards at the edge of the Microsoft network to dramatically increase the security, and validates physical presence for collaboration or personalization.

In related news, LiteScape announced today that it has introduced technology to support Microsoft Live Communicator “which dramatically reduces phone tag and increases efficiency in employee communications.” The solution is said to enable integration of Microsoft Live Communicator with WebEx and Live Meeting. This integration provides a “PBX neutral gateway which functions as a remote call control agent for secure unified communications.”

“By integrating MS-LCS with WebEx and Live-Meeting, OnCast synchronizes the identity of phone users with that of desktop users and provides merged identification for participants in multi-party collaboration sessions,” said Kayvan Alikhani, executive vice president of product development for LiteScape. “Using a pure SIP strategy, we are fully agnostic and capable of integration with any device.”

“LiteScape applications include presence aware accept/place/monitor/conference and call-deflect features to non-IP devices such as mobile phones,” said LiteScape’s executive vice president of sales and marketing Rod Hamlin. “We found that providing secure collaboration resolved numerous customer security pain points.”

LiteScape is an official Microsoft Independent Software Vendor (ISV).

For more information, visit www.litescape.com.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.