Selsius Systems

Selsius Systems was a company in the late-1990s that developed and marketed some of the first IP basedtelephony gear. Selsius was acquired by Cisco Systems in 1998.

Products

Selsius had designed an IP-PBX solution consisting of a line of IP (Ethernet) phones, a server-based call control application - the Selsius-CallManager, a line of voice over IP gateways and voice applications including voice mail, a software attendant console and a softphone.

History

Selsius Systems was organized as a wholly owned subsidiary of Intecom, a Dallas-based PBX (Private Branch Exchange) manufacturer in July, 1997. Its CEO was David C. Tucker. Richard B. Platt was its VP of engineering. Tucker is currently an executive at Cisco Systems. Kevin Brown was its VP of Sales and Marketing. Kevin is currently (2006) the CEO of IPcelerate. The first commercially available Ethernet phone, five Selsius 30SP's, were sold by Selsius in November, 1997, to the TRI lab of Southwestern Bell in San Antonio.

Selsius Systems was borne out of Incite, a division of Intecom. The Incite team, led by Tucker and Platt, developed and marketed a video PBX. The Incite concept was outlined on a napkin in 1993 and formally organized as a division within Intecom in mid-1994. While Incite's distributed call control software architecture was innovative, the market for high-end video PBX was not responsive. At Tucker's urging, Intecom executives and their parent's executives from Matra Communications kept the Incite team together as Selsius was spun out into its own company. Approximately 35 engineers, marketing and sales personnel were part of the original Selsius organization. At the time of the Cisco acquisition, the Selsius team had about 55 employees. From the core call control component of Incite, the Incite Multimedia Manager, grew the Selsius CallManager, Cisco CallManager, and ultimately Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

Selsius Legacy

The current invocation of the Selsius legacy is Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Cisco Unified Communications Manager is the call processing component of the Cisco Unified Communications System. Cisco Unified Communications Manager is the primary legacy of the Selsius team. Cisco Unified Communications Manager and related communications products are responsible for approximately $1 billion (US) revenue (2005) for Cisco. Pull-through revenue to Cisco (from enterprise switches, routers and other network infrastructure components) has been estimated by some to be as high as three times the Cisco Unified Communications Manager-related revenue. In its first year of operation, Selsius sold about 3,000 IP phones. In 2006, Cisco sold 3,000 of its IP phones - an extension of the Selsius legacy - every eight hours.