Cisco (News - Alert), a partner to IVR Technologies, has a new strategy for 2008: evolve the network into the key platform for IT operations by focusing on software. That’s according to a recent report on Cisco Exam Review.

 

Software and service capabilities lie at the core of Cisco’s new strategy, Cisco Exam Review said. This includes elements like collaboration, unified communications, data center virtualization and Web 2.0. The company sees a trend toward using software for managing network infrastructures traditionally handled by hardware. This means, in part, moving such software solutions into the data center.

 

Cisco’s new strategy is in line with the perspective of partner IVR Technologies, a company that offers SIP-based software for billing, media and application functions traditionally handled by hardware servers.

 

IVR Technologies’ flagship product, Talking SIP, in fact, rolls those three distinct roles into one. Talking SIP is an application server. It is a media server. It is a billing server. In short, Talking SIP is a software solution for next-gen, SIP-based networks.

 

By communicating directly with softswitches, gateways, IADs and IP phones from vendors like Cisco, Talking SIP manages enhanced service applications in real time. As a SIP-based server, Talking SIP is even enabling mashups like IVR Technologies’ recently announced Facebook (News - Alert) application, callme.

 

Callme, an application offered in partnership with Global Telelinks and based on the Talking SIP platform, allows Facebook users to make free voice calls with other members of the social network without revealing their phone number. This functionality is also extended for use on mobile phones through integration with VoodooVox’s (News - Alert) In-Call Media Network

 

Even more recently, IVR technologies unveiled a new family of smartphone applications that integrate tightly with Windows Mobile 6-powered devices to facilitate calling card and callback functions. These applications can be accessed through speed dial, a voice tag, or the Windows Start menu.

 

Clearly, the strategies now being employed by both Cisco and IVR Technologies are focused on the idea of using software to perform advanced network functions. This has implications for communications narrowly and for computing broadly—two fields that are increasingly merging.