Nortel urges users to develop a taste for SIP
Vendor offers communications products using multimedia protocol
Nortel is pushing for enterprises to adopt the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), according to Peter Finter, Nortel head of enterprise solutions for EMEA.
The firm is among a large number of vendors rushing communications products to market using SIP in preference to H.323 - an existing multimedia protocol.
"We are seeking hyper-interactivity," said Finter at Global Connect in Los Angeles, the annual conference of the International Nortel Networks Users Association.
He cited examples such as helpdesk agents finding engineers to address specific technical problems, or readers contacting the author of a document by clicking on their name in the document itself.
"The thing we most like about SIP is that it really doesn't care what hardware you're using, so you don't have to buy SIP phones for £200 each, which frankly is a rip-off," said Darren Scully, commercial director at Nexus Open Systems.
"This will make for far more creative business systems in the future. SIP isn't the end game. It'll last a few years - like the hype over VoIP (voice over IP)."
H.323 was originally drawn up by the International Telecomm-unications Union as a standard for sending voice and video over IP LANs without Quality of Service.
SIP is an application layer control protocol intended to initiate, modify and tear down IP telephony and multimedia sessions. Most telephony vendors are moving towards full SIP support on phones and systems.
Nortel currently offers several products supporting SIP, including its Multimedia Communi-cation Servers and an SIP multimedia client that runs on a PDA or on a desktop computer through a web browser.
Within a year the company plans to add SIP support to its line of communication servers, as well as IP devices such as phones and conferencing appliances.
Apart from launching new SIP-enabled products, Nortel aims to further push the protocol with its Preferred Software Membership programme.
However, Finter realises some customers will be reluctant to take him up on his offer. "The world is sceptical of the next big thing. But it's not just Nortel Networks saying this. Everybody is talking about it," Finter claimed, pointing to Nortel partners such as Microsoft and BT.