4/7/2009 -- Cisco Systems Inc. last week burnished its unified communications (UC) bona-fides, introducing a number of enhancements for its UC portfolio.

The new deliverables include Cisco Unified Communications Desktop Integration, a client services framework designed to let adopters expose Cisco UC services (including messaging, presence or conferencing capabilities) such that they can be more easily embedded in desktop applications. The big value-add, officials maintain, is that organizations can use the new framework to embed UC capabilities in the context of their existing business processes.

Elsewhere, Cisco announced canned integration between its UC platform and a pair of collaborative tools -- namely, its own WebEx Connect product and Microsoft's Office Communicator offering. Cisco UC already supports similar interoperability with IBM's Lotus Sametime collaboration environment.

Cisco also introduced mobile enhancements for its Cisco WebEx Meeting Center, unveiled a new Mobile Supervisor download for Apple's iPhone (this enables contact center supervisors to receive reports and other information on their iPhones or iPod Touch devices), and introduced a new "One Button to Cisco WebEx Meeting Center" feature for its Unified IP Phone product.

Cisco officials say the new offerings augment the collaboration portfolio that Cisco first announced last September.

"Cisco is delivering a differentiated architectural approach to unified communications and collaboration that allows customers to integrate and interoperate with Cisco solutions, homegrown business applications and third-party products," said Laurent Philonenko, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Unified Communications business unit, in a statement. "By delivering an 'any to any' platform, Cisco gives customers flexibility in how they transform communication and collaboration in any workspace, whether that workspace is a mobile device, contact center environment, desktop client or Cisco Unified IP Phone." --Stephen Swoyer