Jabra Joins Newly Launched UCIF to Advance Unified Communications Interoperability

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, May 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Jabra, the world leader in innovative audio solutions for unified communications, today announced it has joined the newly formed Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF) to participate in the development of open, standards-based, inter-vendor Unified Communications (UC) interoperability.  The UCIF is a non-profit alliance of worldwide technology leaders working together to fully realize the potential of unified communications.

With the goal of propelling worldwide enterprise UC adoption, Jabra has joined the UCIF along with founding members HP, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Logitech / LifeSize, and Polycom, as well as Acme Packet, Aspect, AudioCodes, Broadcom, BroadSoft, Brocade, ClearOne, Plantronics, RADVISION, Siemens Enterprise Communications, and Teliris.  Recognizing that seamless interoperability is one of the key requirements to drive UC further into today's enterprises, UCIF members will collaborate to overcome existing interoperability barriers and deliver a reliable and rich UC experience.

"As distributed organizations deploy unified communications, interoperability is an enormous hurdle," said Tomasz Goldman, Vice President, Jabra Technology Management.  "They've found over time that their different regional offices have bought systems that aren't compatible with headquarters or with each other.  Or they've discovered their partners and customers have different, incompatible systems, eliminating the most significant benefits of UC – decreased costs and increased productivity.  Jabra, as part of the UCIF, will help overcome these hurdles.  We are honored to be part of this important initiative."

"Interoperability is not only critical to customer success for deploying unified communications but intrinsic to the delivery of legacy, current and next-generation UC tools, services and infrastructure from multiple vendors. Until now, efforts to achieve interoperability have appeared ad-hoc, which has given customers little assurance that their existing and planned investments are protected and will deliver the value promised," said Jonathan Edwards, research analyst, Unified Communications, IDC. "I'm delighted to see Jabra take a leading role by joining the UCIF. Together, these companies will help drive industry wide adoption of open standards and develop programs that put accountability on the vendors and provide peace of mind and investment protection for end customers – something that will surely accelerate adoption of UC technologies."

The UCIF will work with existing industry standards, identifying and filling the gaps between current protocols and interoperability issues that have stalled broad adoption and deployment of valuable communications. UCIF membership is open to hardware and software solution providers, service providers and network operators. For more information or to join the UCIF, visit www.ucif.org.  

About the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum

The Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF) is a non-profit alliance of worldwide communications technology leaders working together to realize the potential of unified communications (UC) by increasing efficiency, decreasing implementation costs and improving the interoperability experience for UC customers. The UCIF's vision is to enable interoperability of standards-based UC hardware and software across enterprises, service providers, and consumer clouds, as a means of generating incremental business opportunity for all stakeholders in the ecosystem and of increasing the business use of UC technologies and services. The UCIF creates and tests interoperability profiles, implementation guidelines and best practices for interoperability between UC products and existing communications and business applications. Visit www.ucif.org to learn more.

About Jabra / GN Netcom

Through its Jabra brand, GN Netcom is a world leader in innovative headset solutions. With around 900 employees and sales offices around the world, GN Netcom develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of wireless headsets and speakerphones for mobile users and both wireless and corded headsets for contact center and office-based users. GN Netcom's business activities also include its original equipment manufacturing (OEM) business. GN Netcom is a subsidiary of GN Store Nord A/S. Visit  

SOURCE Jabra