Cisco Calls Intercompany Media Engine 'Game Changing' Technology

Networking giant Cisco (News - Alert) has demonstrated for the first time its Intercompany Media Engine, or “IME,” a product that offers integration between different companies' unified communications systems across the Internet. The demonstration was staged between Queensland Rail and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, according to the company’s statement.

“Through Cisco IME, all participants were able to enjoy enterprise video and high-fidelity wideband audio from their video-enabled devices by simply dialing standard phone numbers,” company officials said in a release.

Cisco IME is designed to enable companies to conduct secured high-quality, voice and video telephone calls between companies across the Internet using their existing telephone numbers.

“We believe that IME is the most disruptive communications technology developed in more than a decade,” said Barry O'Sullivan, senior vice president, Cisco Voice Technology Group.

However, Cisco has not confirmed whether its IME was able to support communication between UC systems sold by other vendors.

The goal of IME, according to Cisco, is to allow organizations to extend the benefits of video telephony and other advanced unified communications features to their customers, suppliers and strategic partners. With enterprises increasingly relying upon their partners to deliver results, the need to better collaborate across corporate network boundaries is paramount.

Cisco IME is based on a 'self-learning' technology, one that learns new routes based on calling patterns and automatically recognizes when users are operating in an IME-equipped network.

The technology allows end users to more effectively communicate using body language through video, as well as optimized voice technology, while at the same time helping to reduce costs.

Cisco quoted James Sankar, director of applications and services for AARNet, as saying that the company’s primary motivation for trialling Cisco Intercompany Media Engine was to enable and assess the performance, quality and usability of rich video and collaboration internally and among our university partners, which initially includes shareholder CSIRO.