Teamwork and wireless take centre stage

Wireless, voice and collaboration systems dominate Vegas' Interop conference

Wireless, voice and improved collaboration systems were key themes at last week’s Interop conference in Last Vegas.

Cisco chief John Chambers opened the event with a speech emphasising the business value of presence-aware collaboration tools, such as IP-based conferencing and whiteboards, that work from any location using any network, wired or wireless.

Mark Blowers of analyst Butler Group said these developments will take time. “The technology has to be pervasive. We are only just starting to see devices with wireless and cellular functions coming together,” he said.

Chambers also said high-fidelity video, capable of conveying nuances of gesture and intonation, will soon make global conferencing as natural as face-to-face meetings. “Two to three years from now I’ll have telepresence in all my branch offices,” he added.

Juniper chief executive Scott Kriens also noted the importance of seamless communication, but argued that service providers and software vendors must upgrade legacy systems to run supporting technologies, such as click-to-call in CRM systems.

“We need a plan for application development that realises that the legacy applications that aren’t aware of distance [and] that don’t work on all the devices that we want to use every day have to [support seamless communication],” Kriens said.

Meanwhile, wireless LAN (WLAN) vendor Trapeze and software vendor DaVitas announced joint plans to improve roaming between cellular and Wi-Fi networks. DaVitas will deliver handoff functions that Trapeze will combine with wireless multimedia and 802.11e QoS capabilities through its Mobility Exchange switches.

Also at the event, Symbol Technologies unveiled its Wireless Next Generation architecture, to let firms manage Wi-Fi, WiMax and RFID through one central platform. And AirMagnet showed off its Vo-Fi Analyzer to troubleshoot voice over WLAN systems.

Separately, the proposed next generation Wi-Fi standard has failed a critical vote held by the IEEE, underscoring the risks of buying pre-standard equipment.