Ready for the Next Step
Collaboration Buzz
Rob Preston, Editor In Chief of InformationWeek, writes that the major technology vendors are focusing on collaboration as a key factor in accelerating growth.
"Collaboration and productivity apps are hot again, especially Web-based tools that exploit social networking, wiki, and blogging mania," Preston writes.
And Cisco is in the midst of this wave.
"Tech vendors are now playing to the growth crowd," Preston says. "Application acceleration and WAN optimization, technologies that align connectivity directly with business process improvement, are the fastest-growing areas in networking. Cisco Systems isn’t just in infrastructure anymore; it’s pushing into unified messaging and touting “telepresence” as the next killer app. Over the next five years, Cisco CEO John Chambers maintains, as much as 50% of business productivity gains will be tied to making IP-based video conversations as rich as face-to-face ones. (If you think Chambers is just blowing smoke, consider that he and Cisco almost single-handedly made voice-data network convergence happen.)"
The next step, he says, is for Cisco and others to facilitate adoption. "Until we show our people how collaboration and productivity tools can close more sales or help us meet more deadlines or build better products, they’ll pay only lip service to this stuff," Preston writes. In the case of telepresence, that should not be a hard sell.
Posted by Jack McCarthy at 01:20PM PST
Cisco Around the Web