Cisco simplified how you can make and manage your video calls with Cisco TelePresence Touch 8, a touch-based user interface. Now, we are extending Touch capabilities to the entire TelePresence endpoint portfolio with the Touch 12.
The Cisco TelePresence Touch 12 is now shipping with the new CTS 1300 47, a team system that brings the in-person, 3 camera experience of the immersive products to a smaller, more flexible room. Even better, this 12 inch Touch is also shipping with all CTS products. Check out this video to see it in action and learn more!
How many people does it take to manage the service infrastructure supporting over 150,000 hardware phones, 50,000 soft phones, and 10,000 room and desktop video devices. That’s the size of our UC infrastructure at Cisco, and today we manage all our voice, voicemail, and video services with an integrated voice and video Tier 3 operations team of 25 people, and another 5 people supporting contact center applications and services. We do this by continually finding new efficiencies – learning new ways to support existing services so we can spend more time learning how to support the new technologies.
When does a new business relationship need to move from being a virtual (online) experience to a physical (in-person) experience? That question was a topic of discussion with a couple of friends, over a beer after a recent TechHub event. Moreover, I have been pondering this issue since I participated in the pilot of an International Investment Forum.
How much of our business conversations need to be face-to-face? With all the electronic communication options that are at our disposal today, does it really matter?
I heard an NPR story the other day about the FCC‘s recent ruling that diverts monthly fees from rural telephone service to rural broadband service. The “Universal Service Fund” or something similar has been around since the early 20th century, charging a small fee on our phone bills to subsidize phone service for rural areas and the poor.
The newly minted “Connect America Fund” now allocates this money for mobile telephone and broadband in rural communities and needy areas. As I’ve discussed in a blog post earlier this year, access to the internet can not only offer rural U.S. citizens access to critical information, but it can provide them health care benefits that could literally save lives.
In case you missed it, you can still watch the National Town Hall for the Next Generation Workplace online. 
Shane Milam
Josh Sawislak 
Brooks Moore 
Chris Westphal
