Today, we ‘re featuring a guest post from Brian Blatnik, a senior manager within Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group:

In the month since our CloudVerse announcement the notion of a world of many clouds – public, private, and hybrid – has resonated with our customers, partners, and industry analysts. I’d like to share some perspective on how those types of clouds address different customers in the collaboration cloud services market. Since last month’s announcement highlighted our private cloud model in that market, Hosted Collaboration Solution for Large Enterprises, I’ll focus on that model. As a reminder, the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution gives partners, including service providers and integrators, the ability to deploy multiple collaboration applications on one server in a virtualized environment and then host those applications for multiple client organizations. The solution is designed to be run from partner data centers.

I’m often asked, “Haven’t enterprise voice and other UC services always been delivered from what we now call a private cloud?” It’s true that IP PBXs and other UC servers, like their PBX predecessors, provide services to users from a remote room or facility via a network. But there are two ways in which today’s cloud service delivery differs. First, there is the efficiency of pooling computing, network, and storage resources across multiple locations and services. Second, the services can be delivered in an on-demand fashion with elastic scaling.

The financial and strategic benefits deriving from these two factors are leading many businesses to consider consuming collaboration services in a utility model from Cisco’s partners in the Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS). But the same drivers can result in substantial benefits to businesses that aren’t looking for services from a third party’s public cloud. Read More »

Tags: Cisco Cloud Services, Cisco CloudVerse, Cisco collaboration, Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution, Cisco Partners, Cisco Unified Communications., cloud, cloud collaboration, cloud services, cloudverse, cloud_computing, collaboration, data center, Enterprise, enterprise voice, Hosted Collaboration Solution, Hybrid Cloud, infrastructure, Mobile Apps, mobile devices, private cloud, Public Cloud, unified communications

This certainly has been a monumental year for Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Solutions (HCS), as many service providers such as Verizon and Orange Business Services, embraced the cloud and the potential services that can come with it. In the case of  their business customers, these service providers now offer them a slew of unified communications tools (such as video conferencing and mobility solutions ) through the cloud to allow  their employees to communicate and collaborate wherever they are and on whatever device.

Even our partners are seeing the value that collaboration via the cloud can offer its customers; as one of our channel partners, Neutral Tandem, announced yesterday. As an expert in operating and managing IP networks, Neutral Tandem introduced the first cloud-based collaboration service in the United States specifically developed to be resold by Cisco’s Value-Added Reseller (VAR) community and System Integrators (SIs). The service, based on Cisco’s HCS, will enable VARs/SIs to deliver a full suite of unified communications and collaboration applications.

I guess you can say that cloud collaboration is in full swing as it continues to gain traction steadily in the market. Read More »

Tags: channel partners, ciscochannels, cloud, cloud_computing, collaboration, collaboration summit, HCS, Hosted Collaboration Solution, hosted UC, hosted unified communications, Hybrid Cloud, Neutral Tandem, system integrator, unified communications, Unified Communications Manager, VAR

Defining key terms for understanding the basics of this emerging technology

Cloud computing continues to be a hot trend in technology and is a great option for budget-minded and resource-constrained small businesses. Cloud-based services offer a more cost-effective solution for accessing applications and hardware on demand and provide small businesses with greater flexibility. In fact, many smaller companies are using cloud services without realizing it. And therein lies the challenge—there’s a general lack of understanding when it comes to cloud computing.

In this installment of our Talkin’ Tech series, we define key terms to help you understand the basics of cloud computing. If there’s a term we didn’t include that you’d like defined, please let us know!

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Tags: cloud, Cloud Computing, Hybrid Cloud, paas

Over the last few months, the big trend in Cloud Computing has been a dramatic shift from “talking” to “building”. Companies in every industry are taking the next steps to deploy their strategies to deliver more efficient IT services for their business, with the goal of delivering the services in the best possible manner regardless of the source (Private Cloud, Public Cloud service, Hybrid capabilities).

But companies looking to deploy Cloud Computing or expand their existing footprint face several challenges:

• How to deal with on-going support for legacy applications (such as this or this) while beginning to deploy new virtualized or cloud-based applications?
• How to ensure consistent levels of Security, Auditing, Compliance, and Quality of Service across the range of applications (old and new)?
• How to build out Cloud Computing infrastructure in a way that is consistent and able to easily grow as demand grows?
• How to deal with potential migration from one source of services (internal or external) to another without having to completely re-architecture the underlying infrastructure?
• How to deal with concerns about stability of external Cloud Computing services that are outside of their control?

Tags: Big Data, Business Ready, Client-Server, Cloud Computing, Hybrid Cloud, nexus, NX-OS, private cloud, virtualization

Cloud computing is ubiquitous – directly or indirectly, enterprise organizations, governments and consumers have been actively using or engaging with hosted application platforms for some time and will continue to do so for many years to come.  Lately we have been bombarded by cloud conversations, market analysis on whether cloud is greener, more secure, more cost effective or if it’s here to stay. The din of these conversations sometimes dulls out the reality that cloud is simply a necessary and expected evolution of the way we consume, access, and deliver information over the network. Click here to learn how some private sector organizations are already realizing the benefits of cloud.

With the proliferation of mobile devices, applications and social networks, consumers’ behaviors are changing and access to information anytime, anywhere and over any platform has become a norm. As devices become more relevant, more intelligent and more embedded into our day-to-day lives, we begin to expect that same seamless connected experience across the services we receive from our cities, governments, schools, etc.  Cloud enables these connected devices to go beyond the limitations of our 1:1 interactions and extends our access to services and information. With cloud computing, governments and industries can deploy more dynamic services to grow cities, deliver faster, more reliable services to citizens, and ensure greater access to a global market of opportunities and experiences.

Cloud is really about economies of scale.  Tangible upfront cost savings are difficult to measure, but if you look at cloud as a means to achieving organizational agility through efficient virtualization processes, then the savings are more quantifiable. Cloud computing won’t solve all our IT problems, but it gives us an opportunity to look beyond a siloed approach to IT and information sharing and experience the next generation of collaboration that is dynamic and reliable enough to evolve the way we currently deliver services and operate.

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Tags: cloud, government, Hybrid Cloud, private cloud, Public Cloud