Cisco puts Telepresence Interoperability Protocol in Tandberg server

The newly merged Cisco and Tandberg aimed to make a splash at this year's InfoComm. They came out promoting Cisco's recently announced royalty-free Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP)--created to help Cisco and third-party telepresence products work together.

At the conference, Cisco made its first interoperability push by revealing the Tandberg TelePresence Server which supports the TIP. The server will be available in the blade form factor in the MSE 8000 chassis as well as in a stand-alone appliance.

TIP was launched in January and allows multiscreen telepresence systems to interoperate, improving communications between companies with telepresence systems from different vendors. Cisco released the protocol to the public domain and is offering it to the industry royalty free. In addition to Tandberg, LifeSize and Radvision signed up for the license. The Cisco umbrella may be large enough to promote interoperability, but it will be interesting to see how well it plays with the new Unified Communications Interoperability Forum. An eWeek article seems to imply that it might not play too well with Cisco not being part of the UCIF and some members of the group not planning on supporting the TIP. 

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