“But didn’t you just release Cisco UC 9.0?”

I have heard this often since Oct 16 when we announced Cisco Unified Communications Release 9.0 “in the cloud”, or more specifically in Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS). The question has led to positive discussions around Cisco’s focus on providing customers their choice of deployment model without compromise.

Cloud collaboration is an integral part of Cisco’s Collaboration strategy. We are committed to delivering feature parity for Cisco Unified Communications on premises and in the cloud. After a new Cisco UC release is made available for on premises deployment, then within Read More »

Tags: Cisco Contact Center, Cisco HCS, Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution, Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Unified Communications., Cisco WebEx, collaboration

In the first part of this series I introduced the people in our new “at-a-glance” graphic (see end of this blog where I’ve embedded it) and looked at their diverse roles and the challenges that posed to IT. In this wrap-up blog, I focus on Bijad, the VP of IT, his understanding of the challenges and his response.

Bijad is the man in the middle of the evolution to a post-PC world. As the range of available collaboration technologies has continued to broaden, the focus for IT has begun to swing from delivering individual best-in-class applications to an interest in an integrated collaboration experience that delivers consistent functionality across multiple devices. However, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. From the C-level suites, he is accountable for enabling this cost-effectively while providing a combination of scale, security, and accessibility through a variety of devices and operating systems. From his customers like Doug, Lee, Sarah, and Ben who you met in my previous blog, he’s hearing increasing demands for a rich, personalized, consistent user experience that lets each of them work and collaborate their way — where, when and how they want — without limits. They want tools to help them stay more connected with their peers and other organizations.

Bijad knows that this will require more flexibility and simplicity to preserve a consistent experience and that an open, interoperable architecture is key to success. Even more important, he knows that people, not technology, are the prime source of his company’s competitive differentiation. So he’s listening carefully, and thinking in terms of roles rather than devices.

To support Doug, the VP of sales, and people in similar highly-mobile, outward-oriented roles, Bijad is looking to Read More »

Tags: Bring your Own Device (BYOD), Cisco Customer Collaboration, Cisco Jabber, Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Unified Communications., Cisco WebEx Social, collaboration, Post-PC Era

Did you know that by 2016, two thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video? And by 2020, 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet? This is huge. Plus, the global cloud market will grow nearly 500 percent by 2020. For me, this means I get to communicate with bunches of new people!

For your customers, it means figuring out how to tap into this major shift to empower employees to engage in entirely new ways. It’s also about putting the collaboration solutions in place to help their workforces evolve from knowledge workers to next-generation collaborative innovators.

This transition presents an exciting—and profitable—opportunity for our partners. And Cisco just sweetened the pot with its launch of new products, services, and promotions at the Collaboration Partner Summit in Los Angeles.

Want to accelerate your collaboration sales? Find out what’s new. Read More »

Tags: Cisco Business Edition 6000, Cisco HCS, Cisco prime collaboration manager, Cisco Unified Communications., Cisco WebEx Meeting Server, collaboration summit, Hosted Collaboration Solution, Prime Collaboration

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

We could debate whether certain technologies are or are not a commodity, but the fact of the matter is when many enterprises evaluate their technology spend they consider two points: function and cost.  This viewpoint yields initial cost savings when technology investements are awarded solely based on price.  Unfortunately, a major consideration has been left out when evaluating enterprise technology investments mainly on price.  The business risk and increased operating costs associated with multivendor environments, which in the long run may mitigate any initial cost savings.

This message is not new, but what is new is a research paper from Deloitte that details the value of a single-vendor architecture in mitigating business risk and those investing in technology need to consider these risks at the time of evaluation.  This paper is a great lead in for the business architecture discussion that will translate to the technical architecture.  This paper does two things: Read More »

Tags: byod, Cisco Jabber, Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Unified Communications., collaboration, collaboration architecture, Deloitte Consulting, virtualization