Siemens Teams with Microsoft for Real-Time Communication

The Siemens Communications Group (www.usa.siemens.com) 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 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.

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.

"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.