First impressions matter. Whether you’re trying to get a job, make a sale, or go on a second date, you know that the first things you do and say are critical. Studies say you have between 2 seconds and 2 minutes to make a first impression. When you download a new app for your tablet or phone, how much time does it have to make its first impression on you?

When IT departments make technology decisions, the path to end-user adoption is a key concern. The relative ease or difficulty of setting up and maintaining the back-end infrastructure or cloud service is one thing, but the means by which end users first experience the solution and get started using it is perhaps even more important.

IT needs products that are easy to roll out and that provide end users — their customers — with a delightful first impression. That’s why Cisco considers not just the end user experience and the IT administrator experience, but the places where they intersect, such as in the deployment of solutions to a large end-user community.

A tangible example of this attention to experience is Read More »

Tags: adoption, Cisco Jabber, Cisco Jabber for iPad, collaboration, instant messaging, itunes, Presence, user experience

It used to be that a video call meant going to a special room for a high-end video conference or putting up with the small webcam image on a laptop. Today, nearly all of the calls I handle at my desk are video calls because of the mid-range but very portable video meeting experience in the Cisco Jabber client.

Cisco Jabber Clients use the same video engine from Cisco Jabber Video for TelePresence (Movi). I use Cisco Jabber on our internal ACE network, where Cisco IT has been testing it as a new product before supporting it in production.

Being able to join a high-definition video call instantly, without having to schedule and wait, is more than just a convenience. It is becoming a necessity to conduct business these days and sometimes it’s the only way you can reach some people.

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Tags: ACE, chat, coc-collaboration, HD video, high def, IM, jabber, Jabber Video, Movi, Presence, softphone, video, video conferencing

One client for all communications: That’s the idea behind the new Cisco Jabber and I’m seeing that benefit in my use of this universal communication client. I start the client when I begin my work and use it throughout the day for voice and video calls, to send instant messages to others on my team, and to join WebEx sessions or Cisco TelePresence meetings. In addition to these features, the client also supports Desktop Sharing and Presence, which lets me know the availability status of my teammates at all times.

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Tags: ACE, chat, IM, jabber, Presence, softphone

Today’s work environment – yours, mine, and everyone else’s — is becoming more mobile, social, visual, and virtual. And there is no one magical tool that covers every situation.  We need choice and flexibility for the way we each work.

Any-to-Any collaboration with an easy-to-use consistent experience is the reality of today’s user requirements. However, many solutions available today are brought together with the use of band aids and chewing gum, making it a nightmare to troubleshoot across the various stitched-together call-control systems. Read More »

Tags: byod, collaboration, IM, jabber, Presence, remote access, remote meetings, TelePresence, travel

Technology continues to change not only the tools we use, but the language we use to describe it. Wikipedia describes consumerization as:

…an increasingly accepted term used to describe the growing tendency for new information technology to emerge first in the consumer market and then spread into business and government organizations.

Consumerization absolutely affects technology, but confining the definition to information technology too narrowly defines it. The etymology pins the emergence of the term itself as early as 2001, which is a long time in dog years and at least a half century in technology. But the concept goes back far before Y2K. I could delve into Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, but I’ll stick to less distant history.

Before we get to IT, consider the impact of consumerization on time and choice.

Consumerization & Time
In some ways, our experiences with consumer technology have changed the very speed at which we live our lives. We don’t make time for things the way we used to. We want them now.

It’s the popcorn. OK, it’s the microwave oven. Food is both a human necessity and great motivator. The microwave changed our concept of time and convenience. We haven’t abandoned traditional cooking, but how often do you compare the conventional-oven directions to those for the microwave and think, “I want this to take 45 minutes, 3 minutes just isn’t long enough to wait”?

Popcorn showcases the evolution of our concept of time. Once upon a time, popcorn preparation was at least a 12.4-minute process, start to finish, including the ceremonial melting of butter and cleanup. Plus it required mastering the technique of keeping the pan in constant movement, carefully timing removal to optimize the number of kernels popped.

The mid-1970s arrival specialized popcorn appliances and Jiffy Pop brought popcorn faster and required less clean-up time, while largely eliminating the need for technique. Satisfaction came more quickly and with reduced effort.

And then came the microwave oven and magical little flat packages that fluffed up with aromatic salty goodness in three minutes. Clean up consisted of wiping the buttery stuff off your hands and tossing the bag in the trash. Instant gratification. Near zero effort. Our concept of time? Changed forever.

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Tags: byod, Cisco Jabber, collaboration, Consumerization, Consumerization of IT, device independence, instant messaging, mobile devices, Presence