IBM Corp, 3Com Corp, and Bay Networks Inc are due to come together today to announce an alliance focusing on interoperability in hybrid router/switch LAN environments. Details are thin on the ground, but it seems likely that the announcement will center on the trio committing itself to adopting the same subset of standards – presumably stuff like the ITU’s T.120 standard for data conferencing, and H.323 for audio and video conferencing – and ensuring interoperability between their implementations. In this respect, the alliance would complement the March agreement (CI 2885) announced by Microsoft Corp, Intel Corp and others – including 3Com and Bay – which was designed to achieve the same thing but for wide area communications over the Internet. A Bay spokesman would not directly confirm that this is the form that the announcement will take, but he did admit that it will not be too dissimilar to the Microsoft and Intel-led one.
