Cisco’s overarching objective is to create a unified user experience across our entire collaboration portfolio from IM to web conferencing to immersive TelePresence. We want to deliver the highest quality and most consistent experience to all users.
Cisco’s portfolio of collaboration infrastructure includes call control, conferencing, enterprise edge and management; and we are consistently delivering advancements across all of these key areas.
Changes in the way we work are creating new challenges in business communications and collaboration. With the growing trend of a more dispersed workforce, organizations are looking to video technologies such as telepresence as the new standard for effective collaboration. To be productive, employees need to have access to the same communication services on any type of device, but organizations are finding it is not easy to deploy video for mobile workers.
Cisco’s call control solution brings together Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Cisco UCM) and Cisco Video Communications Server (Cisco VCS) to offer the same suite of feature-rich communication services regardless of device and location. With Cisco UCM and Cisco VCS, customers can easily collaborate using different devices, from anywhere, and with users within and outside of their organization. The unified communications experience accelerates productivity across the mix of mobile and office and home-based workers.
There’s a common theme between world class athletes in training for medal success at the Games and business people working towards winning business. They both have an inherent desire to succeed and look for the best solutions to help them achieve their goals.
One example of this is the use of video. As the role of technology has evolved, so has the use of video, to the point where it has now become a vital tool in the performance kit bag.
Not only is video now used to develop skills and improve technique, it can also help to prepare, plan and put in place the strategies they need to achieve success – from the locker room through to the boardroom.
For those who were at Cisco Live Melbourne, I hope you had a fantastic time. I’m a bit bummed that I didn’t go since it would have been awesome to check out some of the street art. Luckily, Erica did take some pictures to share.
Did you catch our latest Enterprise Video announcement on what we’re doing with physical security in the cloud? You can read all about it here.
Now on to the next thing we’re planning: Cisco Live San Diego! The scheduler went live this week and we have some great sessions for you to attend. Some new ones will be made available soon and I’ll share with you once we get those in the system for registration.
One thing we’re doing again this year is the executive Q&A. This year we have a great panel of our leaders in Video and Collaboration who will be taking your questions live on Thursday morning, 14 June 2012, from 10:00am to 11:30am. This is a chance for you to ask questions like “What the heck is medianet?” or “How can I deliver collaboration tools on mobile devices?”.
We’re collecting questions here on this blog, so don’t be shy and ask some below in the comments. On Thursday morning at Cisco Live San Diego, we’ll present your questions to our executive panelists and they’ll answer them on stage.
Yesterday I delivered a keynote presentation at Enterprise Connect in Orlando, where touched upon the importance of in-person communications. I’ve recorded a video where I reflect further on how in-person communications are key to business leaders who are dealing a whole new set of business imperatives for success — solving complex problems quickly, effectively scaling partner interactions, growing customer relationships, enabling agile innovations. A powerful way of driving innovation and transforming key business processes is by engaging the experience, perspectives and knowledge of colleagues and individuals across your business community via in-person communication and collaboration.
We recognize it is critical that organizations with smaller video deployments or those starting small with plans to grow have access to video collaboration capabilities. One size does not fit all.
Cisco is excited to announce the industry’s first hardware stackable multipoint appliance, the Cisco TelePresence MCU 5300 Series. Designed for entry level to mid-sized deployments, it allows you to scale at your own pace. The MCU 5300 Series builds on the market-leading Cisco TelePresence MSE 8000, delivering the same comprehensive conferencing capabilities and core features.
Traditional network performance management relies on probes/service modules for data collection but it does not scale as monitoring is best done pervasively unless you already know in advance where all the problems are going to be. Furthermore, traditional solutions have not been able to provide adequate visibility and the relationship between the network and applications to pinpoint the issue.
Medianet introduces monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities embedded with routers, switches, endpoints and applications. Essentially router, switches and endpoints/applications become passive probes so pervasive monitoring is possible. The instrumentation across routers, switches and endpoints/applications offer a hop by hop view of traffic performance (loss, jitter, latency, etc.) that was too costly or complex of network operators to deploy.
The results are in: Four out of five college students want to choose the device they use for their jobs—further validation that the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement is here to stay.
Cisco surveyed college students and young professionals working around the world to determine the influence mobile device protocols, remote work opportunities, and Internet policies have on their employment decisions. It turns out that, even more than salary, flexible device and telework arrangements matter to young prospective employees. They seek organizations that embrace technologies, like telepresence, that support anywhere, anytime collaboration and, with the right set-up, can operate smoothly on personal mobile devices.
The show is taking place March 26-29th at The Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL.
If you’re attending Enterprise Connect, visit the Cisco booth #1001 where you can see firsthand all of the exciting new solutions being announced by the Cisco TelePresence, Collaboration and Enterprise Video teams.
In addition to our booth activities, Cisco is participating in a number of speaking sessions and our very own OJ Winge, SVP and General Manager, Collaboration Endpoints, will deliver the keynote on Tuesday, March 27th at 10 am EDT. Follow these links for the full list of Cisco booth activities and speaking sessions. To sign up for mobile alerts on Cisco activities during the show, simply text “CISCO” to 66937.
Networks and applications have become increasingly complex as new rich media applications and networking technologies have been adopted. Today, organizations rely so heavily on their networked infrastructure, it is imperative to move beyond reactive management techniques of old and assume a more proactive approach by instituting scalable performance management. Medianet introduces monitoring capabilities embedded with router and switches. The IOS Performance Monitor feature enables pervasive monitoring across your infrastructure so in the event of quality issues, there is a way to identify where and what the problem is.
What are your plans for St. Patrick’s Day? Why not celebrate it the true Irish way by watching the festivities happening at the Christchurch in Cork, Ireland! For the first time ever, citizens will be able to watch St. Patrick’s Day celebrations occurring on both sides of the pond through a live simulcast link between San Francisco’s City Hall and their sister city of Cork, Ireland (more information here).
At 1:00 pm PDT, San Franciscans in City Hall Plaza will be able to see the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terry Shannon, kick off a live broadcast of Pulses of Tradition – a festival of traditional Irish music and dancing taking place inside the beautiful ChristChurch at the heart of Cork. Festival-goers on the other end will be able to see the finale of San Francisco’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade as it arrives at the Plaza, from a live display in City Hall. In addition, revelers in San Francisco will be able to toast their Irish friends as, for the first time, Moylan’s Beer (from Movato, California) will be toasted over Cisco TelePresence.
Green with envy that you won’t be in San Francisco City Hall Plaza to attend the parade? Don’t worry – Cisco and U-Stream have you covered. Check back here tomorrow, or access the live stream from your mobile phone or tablet at this link. You will join an expected 45,000 attendees in San Francisco in a first of its kind, global St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
This celebration could only be enabled through the power of the network with Cisco. Cisco TelePresence Codec C90 systems in both San Francisco and Cork will provide a high-quality video connection between both cities thanks to a collaboration with service provider UPC in Ireland; Cisco TelePresence will also stream the live video out through U-Stream to remote viewers throughout the world.
The Enterprise Video team is on the move again, this time to Cisco Live Melbourne!
Cisco Live Melbourne runs March 20-23 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
You can catch Enterprise Video demos in multiple areas of the World of Solutions.
For starters, check out the main Cisco area will feature the latest in Cisco Digital Signage, including signs with touch interactivity, as well as kiosk-based signs with endless aisle applications.
Next, head over to the Collaboration area, which features the latest in integration across our video content solution with new ways to capture, transform and share video. Be sure to stop by this demo following Rob Lloyd’s keynote, as we will be “pulsing” it just like we did for Cisco Live London!
Many things need to be taken into consideration when choosing a collaboration endpoint technology: what’s the experience you want to create, how you plan to use it, what environment must it accommodate? The analogy I like to use is “it’s like shopping for a car.” There are many considerations to be made when buying a car: It must meet your lifestyle, your transportation needs, the number of passengers and type of cargo you intend to carry.
A single person is more likely to choose a different type of car than people with families. Active people may choose an SUV to carry all their sporting equipment, or for the adventures they take on rugged terrain. This thought process also comes into play when choosing a collaboration solution. The ultimate goal is to have the right communications tool for the right task.
Digital Signage Expo (DSE) was full of energy this year and the continued expansion of the digital signage market was clearly evident. I’ve watched the digital signage industry evolve over the past five years from static content on traditional screens to customized, rich media content on a multitude of connected devices. At this year’s DSE the continued innovation and excitement was undeniable. The exhibit hall floor was packed with attendees who were eager to learn about the advancements in the technology and the industry as well as how to get the most out of their digital signage deployments. Throughout the EXPO floor, speaking sessions, and events the buzz was around interactive and engaging signage.
Cisco announced new digital signage innovations, delivered through the Cisco® Interactive Services solution set, that provide enhanced interactive capabilities through video, Web applications and touchscreen digital signs. Cisco also announced new customers that showcase the continued expansion of the digital signage market, including the Canadian city of Edmonton and parx casino® in Pennsylvania. In addition, Cisco received four Apex Awards, handed out by the Digital Signage Federation recognizing innovation and excellence in the digital signage industry. For more insight from the show floor, check out this video of Erica Schroeder, Director of Marketing for Enterprise Video at Cisco.
IPSLA VO generates realistic synthetic traffic similar with the same characteristics of real media traffic (e.g. burstiness, packet size, packet rate, etc.). Without involving the endpoints, IT operators can generate traffic and observe its impact on the network and other existing applications. This makes IPSLA VO a powerful tool to validate network configurations and capacity:
