We recently published a new case study that describes how Cisco IT has evolved its internal collaboration and social sharing site, called the Integrated Workforce Experience (IWE). With IWE and the Cisco® Quad™ platform, Cisco IT provides the types of social networking tools—blogs, microblog messages, and informal videos—that employees use outside of work. In IWE, those tools are optimized for internal use within Cisco and are implemented in a robust, scalable, and secure way. Originally created by Cisco IT on an open-source platform, IWE now runs on the Cisco Quad platform. The platform migration required integrating the social sharing tools with minimal user disruption, preserving user documents, migrating different user data types appropriately, supporting application portals, and educating employees.
Read More »

Tags: cisco on cisco, coc-collaboration, collaboration, iwe

Pervasive video is a relatively new concept in the world of IT, but it’s one that organizations of all sizes will increasingly hear more about. Certainly at Cisco we use the term often. In fact, we have a pervasive video strategy. So what does that mean? Well, we have video endpoints and solutions that range from IP video phones for personal communication, to desktop PC video clients and enterprise TV for scalable employee communications, to immersive TelePresence for a life-size, face-to-face experience. But it’s not the number of endpoints and solutions themselves that constitute pervasive video. Rather it’s how we use video throughout the organization to promote collaboration and communication with anyone, anywhere, and ultimately drive business objectives. This end goal is the cornerstone of Cisco’s pervasive video strategy. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, cisco on cisco, coc-collaboration, video

In my last blog I described how Cisco employees have adopted teleworking, using either a software VPN client, or a hardware VPN solution called Cisco Virtual Office (CVO).  Cisco employees who telework on a regular basis prefer CVO over software VPN because the connection tends to be more stable and Cisco Virtual Office saves them the trouble of constantly logging back in. In addition, CVO provides QoS (quality of service) for voice and video which is critical to a high quality audio and video experience.

The preference for CVO is reflected in the fact that our employees who use the software VPN client work a little over 1 day per week from home while the 21,000 employees who use CVO report that they telework an average 2.5 days per week.

Read More »

Tags: cisco on cisco, Cisco Virtual Office, coc-borderless-networks, CVO, ISR, QoS

A Message from Toby Larsen

As the former CIO of Tandberg, I know firsthand the tangible benefits that video can bring to a business.  Tandberg was really a company built around the use of video.  Our network architecture, communication infrastructure and dial plans were designed for mass deployment of video, and the efficiencies that came along with it.  Our use of video vastly exceeded that of traditional voice services and textual communication.

Video is also transforming the way business is conducted at Cisco.  I see it every day through a variety of solutions including WebEx conferencing, TelePresence, digital media signage, and Tandberg products. Ultimately, visual communication is about scaling human talent – doing more with less.  By combining our borderless networks with cloud computing and services, as well as visual and unified communications, we are truly enabling collaboration with anyone, anywhere.  In doing so, we are actually virtualizing our organization and processes, moving our business from place to space.

Read More »

Tags: Cisco IT, cisco live, cisco on cisco, coc-collaboration