Military certifies Cisco telephony

Cisco Systems has earned a Defense Department certification for its IP telephony technology, further opening the DOD market to the company. The Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) PBX1 certification allows DOD organizations to deploy Cisco’s IP telephony in mission-critical environments, according to Cisco officials.

The certification allows agencies using Cisco to begin the transition from legacy time division multiplexing systems, commonly called TDM, to voice over IP, said Brad Curran, a defense communications analyst at Frost and Sullivan.

JITC PBX1 certification is based on network requirements set by the Defense Information Systems Agency. To be certified, vendors must show that their products are secure and operate without performance degradation in a multivendor environment.

The certification applies only to products that have been tested. Cisco has earned the certification for its CallManager 4.1 call processing software, several of its network switches and three models of IP phones.

Cisco had earlier earned PBX2 certification, a lower level of approval that allows DOD officials to use the technology in a narrower range of settings. PBX1 will let them take Cisco into command-and-control implementations, according to company officials.