In this newsletter, we'll provide a quick wrap-up on VoIP and convergence-related announcements from Interop 2009 held last week in Las Vegas. Highlights include news from Glowpoint on its Telepresence InterExchange, Polycom with several announcements, Shoretel's integration showcase, and Skype's views on business voice.

Glowpoint announced a Telepresence interExchange Network (TEN) service that leverages network and video managed services offered by multiple carriers to provide a business-to-business telepresence and video-calling capability. Glowpoint will use Polycom's room and personal telepresence solutions and video conferencing systems. "Key considerations for customers connecting telepresence and video conferencing outside of their network are security, quality, interoperability and ease of use. TEN addresses all of these areas," said Joe Laezza, president and CEO of Glowpoint in a statement.

In other news, Polycom announced the Polycom VVX™ 1500 C business media phone has been certified for use with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM) 6.1 and 7.0 . The VVX 1500 combines a personal video conferencing system with VoIP and an API to integrate business applications. The company also announced interoperability between its SoundStation IP conference phones and with Session Initiation Protocol SIP)-based products from other companies, including the Avaya Communications Manager with SIP Enablement Services; ShoreTel Unified Communications solution; Siemens Enterprise Communications OpenScape Voice; Mitel Communications Directo; and Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise.

Also at Interop 2009, ShoreTel showcased its integration with IBM Lotus Sametime 8.0 and Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 Release 2. Kevin Gavin, vice president of marketing at ShoreTel, said in a statement, "ShoreTel's ease of deployment and use, the simplicity of our ShoreWare Call Manager application, and our integration with IBM Sametime and Microsoft OCS offer enterprises the flexibility to provide UC features in the way users prefer."

Finally, Stefan Öberg, general manager and vice president of Skype for business, proposed more cooperation and interoperability between Skype and PBX manufacturers. As Network World's Tim Green reported last week, Skype has increasingly focused on the enterprise as an opportunity with initiatives such as Skype for Asterisk, increased channel partner support, and an open architecture that allows Skype to be embedded in third-party applications.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.