While Cisco is the predominant provider of commercial networking equipment, they have also become a prominent provider of commercial VoIP phone systems. They've accomplished this by integrating well with their customer's existing infrastructure. Now, it appears they want to integrate with FaceTime as well.
Cisco is a networking company, and as such, has built their existence around connecting dissimilar hardware and software systems. While Cisco does make commercial telephones and consumer devices such as the Flip video camera and Linksys routers, they do not produce anything along the lines of the iPhone. Instead, they have been quick to adopt the iPhone and integrate it with their systems when possible. According to their product page on
Cisco.com, they have several iPhone apps, including apps to use their VoIP and web-based conferencing systems.
While we are likely many years away from the 3-D video conferencing seen in the movie
GI Joe, Cisco has been hard at work to expand video conferencing in the wired phone market. As part of this continuing push, they want to integrate FaceTime into their systems as well. In a brief interview with
ComputerWorld magazine, Senior Vice President of Emerging Technologies Marthin De Beer, had this to say:
"We would absolutely love to integrate with FaceTime."
While Cisco is obviously short on details so far, making their video-calling products interact with existing video-calling products like FaceTime and Skype would obviously make their products far more attractive. Conversely, Cisco integration would make it possible for FaceTime to connect to internal PBX numbers, and possibly even join video conferences.
In a previous article on
AppAdvice.com, we mentioned FaceTime being used in the medical profession. It appears there is definite interest from the business community in adopting FaceTime. What do you think? Is there a real need for FaceTime in the business world?
