Peanut butter and jelly. Sonny and Cher. Ying and yang. Can you think of other things that go together so well? I couldn’t until March’s Enterprise Connect when we announced that Cisco TelePresence and WebEx were uniting to deliver voice, two-way HD video and content sharing to any employee.
Why is this significant?With tens of thousands of Cisco TelePresence endpoints and more than 30 million active WebEx users, we wanted to make B2B video collaboration easier than ever. By combining our market leading Web conference solution, WebEx, with the market leading enterprise high-quality video capabilities in our telepresence solutions we are enabling a seamless meeting with anyone, anywhere, on any device.
Optimized to work with any standards-based video endpoints, Cisco TelePresence and WebEx helps organizations broaden the reach of video collaboration and simplify the experience for all participants.
What can our customers expect by bringing together these two powerful collaboration tools?
Over the past decade, I’ve worked on a number of different projects aimed at improving communications using video conferencing and telepresence. In that time, I’ve been fortunate to be involved with key innovations at first Tandberg then Cisco that have had great impact on video collaboration:
Forging life-like experience with immersive telepresence
Extending the power of in-person all the way to the desktop
Enabling a consistent and intuitive user experience with a revolutionary touch-enabled device
Playing a pivotal role in driving video formats like H.264 and H.265 to standardization
Growing the video calling circle beyond the enterprise with technological advancements like software video clients, cloud deployment models and firewall traversal that enable cost-effective B2B and B2C calling
With the spirit of innovation ingrained in both company’s DNA, the merger of Tandberg and Cisco’s video businesses in 2010 proved to be a major win for the industry and for the customer. Since then, we’ve focused our efforts on delivering next-generation video collaboration solutions that are enabling organizations to collaborate easily and efficiently, and allowing them to foster innovation within their own businesses.
Why is all of this so important? As time marches on, we see video becoming pervasive. Roberto De La Mora recently called video a business imperative, not a nice-to-have, and shared the five steps to success for deploying a business video strategy. The key to helping our customers prepare for the pervasive video future is through a flexible, scalable and interoperable approach. And others agree…
As today’s workforce continues to become more mobile and adopt the “on-the-go” mentality both at home and at work, their needs are also evolving. Companies need to respond. Empowering employees to work anytime, anywhere will improve efficiencies and increase productivity. When the staff takes their work outside of office walls, an environment of knowledge, sharing and creativity across local, regional and global teams is created naturally. The Internet of Everything (IoE) is a clear driver in this new collaborative environment as companies continue to connect more people, devices, processes and data. This collaborative environment, in turn, also empowers a company as a whole through the insights and data exchanged.
In one of my previous posts, How Not Where Is What Matters Most in a Collaborative Work Environment, I noted that mobile and remote workers have higher performance ratings than traditional workers. Are these connections increasing the comfort level with utilizing remote resources on a consistent basis, such as remote mentoring or collaboration with global teams? Is it the extended connection to global colleagues and customers to obtain better insight and decisions? Or, is it the combination? Read More »
For today’s digital generation, collaborative learning is no longer a novelty – it’s an expectation. Students are consuming information in new and different formats – video, Internet, virtual classrooms. These are all tools that are changing the face of education. To make this transformation a reality, students, faculty and administrators need to reliably connect with the people and resources they need whether they’re using their desktop or mobile device, at home or in the classroom.
As more schools offer a comprehensive and collaborative learning experience, they are seeing vast benefits. To transform the delivery of educationKaty Independent School District deployed Cisco Unified Workspace, adding mobile capabilities and immersive video. The decision to invest in these collaborative solutions resulted in improved test scores, increased student, teacher engagement and ease of IT administration.
For schools looking to take the plunge like Katy ISD, what’s the best approach to take?
With Cisco Unified Workspace, schools can build a scalable and secure network that will serve as a strong foundation for the future. Watch the video below to see how Cisco’s solution is designed with utility to unify voice, video, data and secure access on any device and at any location.
Equipped with Cisco’s smart collaboration strategy schools can combine voice, video and mobility to create a classroom that allows faculty and students to collaborate efficiently and securely.
Budget cuts are costing many American students their arts education. As a wanna-be artist and overall proponent of all things creative, I have long valued the impact of arts education – especially in public schools. Unfortunately, these are the programs that are too often cut when budgets are slashed and difficult decisions must be made.
OK, so you probably won’t argue with me that art is important – after all, as children, it’s how we learned a lot of things, right? Who doesn’t have at least one thing they use a song to remember? I only have to key into the tune of ’3 blind mice’ to remember how to calculate the area of a circle (thanks to Mr. Bowlware, my fourth grade math teacher).
Studies show, too, that arts-engaged students show more positive outcomes in a variety of areas than their low-arts-engaged peers – especially in socially and economically disadvantaged student populations. This is exactly what makes programs like Fred Martin’s Urban Entertainment Institute (UEI) so valuable – and inspiring. Read More »
