Royal Philips Electronics and 3Com made a key announcement this morning. The electronics and technology giants announced a recently formed alliance to provide a secure converged communications offering for targeted at enterprises. According to the new agreement, the two companies will now be able to provide businesses with Philips' broad communications portfolio, supported by 3Com's portfolio of edge-to-core networking, security, wireless and network management systems. The companies have the official rollout of the combined service initially scheduled for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. 3Com and Philips also announced today the services first client, Telecom Italia.

Telecom Italia explained that recognizing the benefits of a one-stop-shop for end-to-end secure converged systems; the alliance enables it to focus on the value added business with its customers without having the worries of combining separate portfolios itself.

"We are extremely pleased with the bolstering of our existing offering this alliance brings. We are now in the position to cover all customers' needs across the complete spectrum of voice, video and data, including security. This gives Philips a leadership role and a compelling advantage throughout the value chain where other market players only offer partial solutions. This broader footprint will enable us to expand our market and take full advantage of the uptake in secure converged communications. It will also increase order hit rates and profit margins of customer projects where our portfolio and services can offer maximum added value across the whole spectrum of voice, video and data rather than just focusing on voice only," said Philips Business Communications' CEO Ad Ketelaars.

Telecom Italia said it chose the system for its simplification and flexibility of a secure converged architecture delivered by the Philips-3Com alliance. The client added that the system allows for ready deployment of sophisticated integrated business applications that in turn deliver business benefits and added value. According to Philips, its combined system enables enterprise customers to communicate via voice, data or a combination of the two, using a wired or wireless device of their choice regardless of location, with the confidence that it is fully secured.

"We offer our customers the freedom to use the device of their choice in communicating, enabling them to directly access all the information they need to have close at hand and have it presented in a format that their chosen device fully supports. And all this in a fully secure manner, without worries about bandwidth, runtime errors, log-on procedures or translations. By doing so we give full meaning to sense and simplicity from a communications perspective," Ketelaars added.

"This partnership represents a significant opportunity for 3Com to further penetrate the enterprise market," said Bruce Claflin, president and CEO of 3Com Corp.

"The portfolios and strategies of both companies complement each other perfectly, enabling customers to enjoy the benefits of Philips' broad communications portfolio and 3Com's proven portfolio of edge-to-core networking, security, mobility and network management solutions. The combined power of Philips and 3Com addresses the needs of enterprises to switch to secure and converged voice, video and data communications, either gradually or in a single step."

Todays news follows 3Coms recently announced enhancement to Internet Protocol (IP) telephony software.

Key features in this new, fifth generation release of the 3Com NBX IP Telephony system include the following:

• New automatic call distribution (ACD) option to allow businesses to expand their customer care service for up to 199 agents as part of their own in-house operations;
• Support for silent monitor/whisper/barge-in. When used with the ACD feature, supervisors can listen in on an incoming call, silently coach agents while on an active call and interrupt a call in progress if needed by barging into a call;
• Account code dialing and verification to allow professional service companies to track and bill professional staff time;
• Support for the 3Com 3103 Manager large screen, Gigabit-speed phone with personal directory and call logs;
• Support for the 3Com 3100 Entry, a single-line Power over Ethernet (PoE) compliant IP phone designed to be an alternative to traditional analog telephones; and
• Support for two cordless IP phones for retail and small office applications.

Royal Philips Electronics
www.philips.com

3Com Corporation
www.3com.com