IBM and Avaya Extend Call Collaboration

IBM and Avaya have announced an agreement to include Avaya-powered "click-to-call" functionality and web conferencing integration into IBM's Lotus Sametime, Notes, and Domino products.

The click-to-call functionality will allow IBM's Lotus Sametime, Notes, and Domino users to seamlessly place a VoIP call directly from their instant messaging or email client. Conferencing multiple users ("click-to-conference") is also enabled, allowing users to select multiple contacts for a conference call. Avaya's Meeting Exchange solution will also provide integrated audio conferencing for Lotus's Web conferencing solution

Adam Gartenberg, Offering Manager Real-time and Team Collaboration products at IBM Lotus, noted that IBM has been seeing a need in the market for a link between online forms of collaboration and the telephony piece. "As companies are switching over to VoIP systems they are looking at ways of bringing together the telephony environment and their online collaboration environment," Gartenberg told EntepriseVoIPplanet.com. "So we see a lot of adoption really starting to pick up in the last year or two of things like instant messaging on the desktop and a lot more usage of web conferencing within an enterprise environment."

Gartenberg explained that many users think that the collaboration provided by instant messaging is great, though a lot of instant messaging sessions typically end with a request for a phone call. "Being able to extend the environment and just click a button to start that phone call is something that we really see as adding a lot of value," Gartenberg said.

The web conferencing integration and click-to-call functionality are expected to available beginning with Lotus Sametime in Q4 2005, followed by Lotus Notes and Domino in Q1 2006. IBM Workspace Collaboration integration is expected at some point in the future.