In early 2009, I was asked to form a virtual, global team within Cisco IT to figure out how we could reduce international long distance calling expenses at Cisco. As a result of adding 28 TEHO routes we were able to avoid future PSTN costs of approximately $4 million per year.
Reducing Long-Distance PSTN Costs at Cisco
Finally, from Phones to Click-to-Connect Conferencing with Cisco Unified Personal Communicator
At a global company like Cisco a lot of our meetings are held as conference calls with people all over the world. These meetings can last an hour or more, so a company phone is useful especially after hours or when you’re traveling. For me, that’s when a softphone on my laptop is the best solution. It uses the power of the corporate network to make low-cost business calls (and they’re free to me). Many people at Cisco use Cisco IP Communicator, which is a great softphone. My preference is Cisco Unified Personal Communicator because it combines the softphone with presence information, instant messaging, and very recently a new feature called “click-to-conference” WebEx.
Showcasing Cisco’s Richardson Data Center at Cisco Live 2010
At Cisco Live 2010 in Barcelona last month, Cisco IT’s Rich Gore spoke with Donald De Witte of the Cisco Data Center Networks blog about our production data center in Richardson, Texas. As Rich noted, the technologies and IT architecture inside the Richardson data center (normally closed to the public) are shared in the Cisco IT Data Center Experience, an interactive virtual tour. If you haven’t seen the virtual data center tour, be sure to check it out.
Top Tips for Managing a Cisco Unified Personal Communicator Upgrade
Earlier this year, Cisco IT offered internal users a new version of the Cisco Unified Personal Communicator application that includes the very useful “click-to-conference” feature.
Because this application is very popular among users for managing their communications, we knew the upgrade should be rolled out in a controlled way to minimize disruptions.
Here are our top three tips for Cisco customers who are planning a similar upgrade:
Borderless Networks: Supporting the Business at Our Branch Offices
Gone are the days when business operations were primarily concentrated at headquarters. Today, branch offices are the lifeblood of any global business and Cisco is no different. In this short video, Jawahar Sivasankaran from the IT Customer Strategy & Success group explores some of the business trends driving branch office business architectures at Cisco and some of the technology architectures that Cisco IT is using to meet these requirements.
