Siemens Teams With Microsoft

REDMOND, Wash. and MUNICH -- The Siemens Communications Group and Microsoft Corp. today announced a new global sales and marketing alliance, a multi-year agreement that will deliver a comprehensive family of enterprise-grade, presence-enhanced calling, video and Web conferencing, and collaboration solutions to customers throughout the world.

The alliance leverages a successful strategic product relationship the companies have built over the last two years. Siemens and Microsoft share a common vision of presence-enabled communication that integrates voice, video, instant messaging and Web conferencing into a comprehensive tool suite to improve worker productivity and team collaboration.

The two companies will align market development and sales activities to deliver:

"The alliance of Siemens and Microsoft demonstrates forward thinking on behalf of each company about the future of converged voice and data leadership," said Dr. Brent Kelly, a senior partner at Boston-based Wainhouse Research. "While Live Communications Server allows voice and presence collaboration to be integrated with existing workflow tools -- all interfacing with legacy switches -- this is a smart move that can help a very broad customer base transition smoothly to next generation Voice over IP (VoIP) solutions."

"Siemens and Microsoft have agreed on an aligned roadmap of presence-based, real-time communication objectives to help erase the communication gaps that remain between the personal computer and the office telephone," said Bernd Kuhlin, president of Enterprise Networks Systems at Siemens Communications. "Together we've aligned Live Communications Server 2005, 'Istanbul' and the HiPath OpenScape product family to deliver a shared vision of communication tools that are standards-based and presence-enabled so that enterprises can gain strategic advantages from real-time collaboration. Now we're cooperating closely in the field to bring the benefits of that shared vision to customers."

"Our customers tell us they need to find and communicate with people in real time, and they need to successfully work together without having to be in the same place. Microsoft and Siemens are dedicated to delivering to our customers the industry's most enhanced presence and collaboration solutions. We're both building on a broader industry commitment to Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) standards," said Anoop Gupta, corporate vice president for Real-Time Collaboration at Microsoft.

Microsoft Corp.

Siemens Communications Group