With less than 24 hours before the anticipated release of Microsoft's Office Communications Server (OCS), Covergence (www.covergence.com) has announced its Covergence Session Manager (CSM) will support OCS, enabling the delivery of real-time applications for OCS users.

Before Covergence, the benefits of real-time services such as VoIP, video and presence remained elusive to enterprises because these services could not run seamlessly over the corporate Wide Area Network (WAN). Now, with the CSM, they can. Covergence is connecting isolated islands of communications within the enterprise to integrate communications into business applications and enhance productivity.

Covergence is one of those companies I've been closely attuned to for the past several months. Ken Kuenzel, their CEO, has become a friend and is one of those people I listen to closely. He shared some of his insights in a recent panel discussion I moderated at the IT Expo in Los Angeles. I had a chance to sit and talk with him privately there, and due to some other issues for me, I've still not had a chance to pull that chat together as a podcast. Watch for that later this week as life is now settling down a little bit.

Microsoft's OCS solution is something that's coming like a freight train. I have mixed feelings about how viable and successful it will be in initial rollout, but I have no doubt that it's going to be a strong enterprise solution that's widely deployed and adopted.

Covergence Announces Support for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
The Covergence Session Manager for OCS enables secure VoIP, video, IM, presence and other real-time collaborative services beyond the walls of the enterprise

MAYNARD, Mass., October 15, 2007 – Covergence®, the leading provider of solutions that integrate, manage and control real-time applications, today announced its Covergence Session Manager (CSM) V3.3 will support Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS). CSM enables the delivery of real-time applications such as VoIP, video and presence for OCS users while giving organizations the complete control and visibility they require.

While enterprises see the potential cost savings and productivity enhancements offered by real-time collaborative services, the benefits remain elusive. This is because, unlike other IP-based applications that run seamlessly over the corporate Wide Area Network (WAN) – such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management, real-time applications are disjointed “islands of communications.” In most enterprises, real-time traffic is routed off the IP network to a service provider network at every physical or logical boundary. This off-WAN routing is costly and prevents enterprises from integrating real-time applications into business applications.

CSM breaks down these islands of communications with its new, dynamic, application-level routing capability – an industry first. The solution optimizes the routing of real-time sessions and ensures that they stay on the WAN as they cross physical or logical boundaries. It also optimizes real-time sessions to ensure predictable quality, performance and reliability – critical features because a small delay or the loss of a few packets can make a real-time session unusable.

"One of the challenges of deploying Microsoft’s OCS or any real-time application is assisting the customer to design a network that ensures real-time communications stay on the enterprise network whenever possible,” said Mark Cortner, senior analyst, Burton Group. “Solutions such as the Covergence Session Manager enable the integration of real-time sessions onto the WAN and optimize routes based on application-level criteria such as cost, quality, congestion and business rules, so that these new services can be integrated into critical business processes.”

Covergence demonstrated early support for OCS in June 2007 through its partnership with European service provider Interoute. Interoute uses the CSM to enable Interoute One, a clearinghouse service that allows enterprises to federate their Microsoft Office Communications Servers and Microsoft Live Communications Servers with other organizations. Interoute One makes it simple and easy for organizations to use IM, presence and VoIP with customers and suppliers.

“The addition of Covergence to the Interoute communications platform has enabled us to open up subscriber-based services and extend the simplicity of Interoute One to exciting, new unified communications platforms like Microsoft OCS,” said Matthew Finnie, CTO, Interoute. “This extension of services simplifies sign-up for existing Microsoft OCS customers. With Covergence Session Manager we can deliver these new, revenue-generating services with business-class security, reliability and quality.”

“The Covergence Session Manager’s state-of-the-art measurement and monitoring capability allows us to route voice and video traffic based the current quality and congestion conditions,” said Bob O’Neil, president and CEO, Covergence. “This ensures the consistent delivery of high quality voice and video that exceeds Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and provides the best possible user experience.”

CSM is designed to meet the needs of small to medium-sized businesses (SMB) and scales its offerings all the way up to the world’s largest service providers, with recently-announced support for the IBM BladeCenter and industry-standard AdvancedTCA chassis. CSM also feeds critical performance and quality metrics to the management frameworks from IBM, HP and others to provide operations teams with the complete visibility and span-of-control they need. All CSM models are available from Covergence today and can be purchased by contacting sales@covergence.com or by calling (+1) 978.823.5200.

About Covergence
Covergence is the leader in scaling, securing and controlling VoIP and other real-time services. The award-winning Covergence Session Manager combines traditional session-border-control functionality with comprehensive security features and management tools. The Covergence Session Manager is purpose-built to securely and reliably connect users to VoIP and multi-media services while giving organizations the complete control and visibility they require. www.covergence.com.

Covergence and Covergence Session Manager are registered trademarks of Covergence. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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