I have often found it a little surprising that while we and customers expend considerable effort planning, building, and managing collaboration solutions, the process of their adoption by end-users can get lost in the proverbial shuffle. Adoption is a really important issue, because adoption is a controlling variable in the collaboration infrastructure investment equation. In other words, a collaboration infrastructure that operates at 80 percent of capacity is going to deliver four times the returns of one that runs at 20 percent of capacity.

The problem of suboptimal adoption goes deeper than the sinking feeling of paying to build and operate infrastructure that sits idle. It gets more serious when one considers that under-adoption means forgoing the positive benefits of collaboration. It’s not so much the money blown on unused equipment and services, but the opportunities missed to Read More »

Tags: adoption, collaboration, ROI, roi of collaboration

In today’s changing marketplace, Cisco continues to invest in an aggressive plan to become the #1 vendor in contact center. In the last year, we’ve made huge gains toward this milestone, with Cisco ranked as the #1 worldwide IVR vendor by a wide margin. And in the last four years, Cisco has closed the market share gap on Avaya/Nortel by nearly 23 points worldwide and by over 33 points in North America.

On our march towards #1, our valued partner ecosystem plays a crucial role. When customers choose Cisco Customer Collaboration solutions, they base their choice not only on our innovative products, but also on their ability to collaborate with established Cisco partners who have a wealth of experience in the contact center market and our solutions. By partnering with Cisco, Cisco channel partners are able to provide customers tremendous value add services, including sales and technical support.

Cisco is continuing to invest heavily in training, supporting and growing our partner ecosystem.  And the investment is clearly paying off.  Read More »

Tags: Cisco Customer Collaboration, Cisco Unified Contact Center Express, collaboration, contact center, partner channel

Los Angeles is an extraordinary city with extraordinary people. And this week, it was even more extraordinary to be in my hometown of LA where we hosted this year’s Cisco Collaboration Summit.  LA is where we built the world’s biggest airplane, the world’s biggest freeway system, and epic movies with the world’s biggest stars. And of course, the Happiest Place on Earth.

This is a town of big dreamers with big ideas, making it a perfect place to bring together customers, partners, analysts, and consultants to talk about big ideas in collaboration.

And now is the time for big ideas. We all know companies can only do so much with cost cutting. It’s important, but in our global economy, the only true way to differentiate and compete is through innovation. 

How do you get to that innovation? Read More »

Tags: collaboration, collaboration summit, future workspace, H.264, h.265, jabber, TelePresence, video, WebEx Social

During the past days at the Cisco Collaboration Summit, I have been with customers, partners, analysts and consultants discussing the future of collaboration and how if we empower and engage employees, we can foster innovation. It is always energizing to hear customers’ business transformation and aspiration stories, share partner opportunities and success stories, and to engage in deep discussions with analysts and consultants regarding our perspectives on the future of collaboration.

My colleague, Marthin De Beer, shared some marketing trends and directions during the opening keynote. His opening with Curiosity’s (Mars Rover) twitter activity is clearly Read More »

Tags: collaboration, Mars Rover, social media, workspace of the future

In meeting with customers and partners, I hear repeatedly how key market transitions – mobility fueled by the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, cloud as a delivery model and the pervasive use of video – are dramatically shifting how organizations communicate and collaborate, both internally and externally.  They want to collaborate from anywhere, at anytime, and on any device — with a superior user experience. For maximum business benefit, they want to accelerate collaboration services across their organization. They want options and they need agility.

Today, Cisco unveiled multiple enhancements to our Cisco Collaboration portfolio — delivered via public, private, hosted/managed cloud models — that provide customers access to an expanded set of market-leading collaboration offerings.  Customers have greater choice in how they deploy collaboration offerings based on their specific needs or requirements.  They also have new options for accelerating collaboration across their business quickly, securely, and reliably. Read More »

Tags: Bring your Own Device (BYOD), Cisco Customer Collaboration, Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Unified Communications., Cisco WebEx, cloud, cloud collaboration, collaboration, contact center