The companies have agreed to jointly fund and co-operatively conduct research focused on secure wireless networks and real-time open unified communications in the short term, as well as work together longer term to create comprehensive vertical industry collaboration solutions to drive business process optimisation for key market segments, such as telecommunications service providers, financial services and digital healthcare.

Additional components of the agreement call for the two companies to establish joint market development efforts focused on the enterprise and service provider sectors. The overall goal of the joint effort is to demonstrate real time communications solutions for business process optimisation using Intel architecture, such as Intel dual-core technology and carrier class Rack Mounted Servers (RMS) from Intel and the HiPath 8000 and OpenScape from Siemens.

The first step is to demonstrate the OpenScape platform running Applications such as Personal Portal, Unified communications, Video and Voice Conferencing and Mobile Clients. Intel and Siemens expect to present findings and display the first wave of technology solutions developed at an Intel lab in the US to selected customers by the fourth quarter of 2006.

The Intel lab will also act as a centre for the optimisation and integration of products from independent software vendors (ISVs) and other third party systems to work with the open unified communication VoIP technologies.

Additionally, Siemens and Intel plan to jointly optimise and prepare Siemens software portfolio based on Intel dual-core technology and Intel virtualisation technology, to provide highest performance scalability and flexible capacity for future performance growth regarding user updates and functional additions to be rolled out worldwide.