IBM/Lotus said Monday that it is forging a partnership with Cisco as part of its efforts next year to revamp its real-time collaboration platform.

The two giants showed off at this week's VoiceCon conference in Orlando, Fla., a customized plug-in for Sametime 7.5 that will integrate the platform with Cisco's Unified CallManager and Unified Presence Server. The integration is based around the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE).

Cisco made a similar announcement Monday with Microsoft to support CallManager on the Microsoft Live Communications Server and Office Communicator client.

Sametime 7.5 is slated to ship next year and includes a new user interface with enhanced "click-to-call, video, instant messaging and e-mail capabilities.

The Sametime plug-in aggregates IP phone presence information for display in the Sametime Connect client. The click-to-call functionality in 7.5 lets users click on a name in their Sametime contact list in order to place a call via a Cisco Unified IP Phone. Users also can send an instant message to a Cisco IP phone from the Sametime client. Integration between Sametime and the Cisco Unified Presence Server will let users send an IM from their Cisco IP phone to Sametime clients. In addition, the Presence Server will publish the Sametime status for each contact stored in the Cisco Unified IP Phone.

IBM said the integration with the Cisco platform will be available from IBM Global Services.

"The value of presence and telephony convergence comes from being able to communicate with whatever presence and telephony system a business may be using," said a Lotus spokesman. "Today's announcement further extends the ecosystem of telephony vendors working with Lotus Sametime 7.5."