Earlier this week, Eric Schoch, Senior Director for Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Solution business and Roberta Mackintosh, Verizon’s Director of Unified Communications and Collaboration hosted a ‘Collaboration to the Cloud’ discussion over TelePresence and WebEx with journalists and analysts in Boston, Florida, New York, Washington and Toronto.
Eric and Roberta expanded on each company’s vision for collaboration in the cloud and gave details on their partnership to offer Unified Communications and Collaboration services. Verizon has integrated Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) and now offers an enterprise unified communications and collaboration platform which can be tailored and customized for its customers. The platform can be deployed as cloud-based only or as a hybrid of a cloud service and on-premise offering. In phase one of the deployment, some of the applications included are voice, video, instant messaging, and presence based such as Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified Mobility, Cisco Unified Presence, Cisco Unity Connection, and Cisco WebEx Meeting Center (hosted by Cisco).
View the video to hear more about:
o Why I should care about cloud collaboration as a service provider?
o Why are service providers essential for collaboration in the cloud?
o How is Verizon currently deploying collaboration solutions via the cloud?
o What are the collaboration deployment issues that are facing enterprises?
Last week, we introduced the new IP SLA Video Operation tool to assess the readiness of a network by generating synthetic traffic to mimic real applications. When you use IP SLA VO to generate simulated RTP traffic between two sites, you can use the medianet Performance Monitor feature to measure the performance of this synthetic traffic across the network. You can also use Mediatrace to discover the network elements on the paths between the two sites. For each network element discovered in the network path, Performance Monitor can collect metrics to detect potential capacity bottlenecks and proactively identify quality issues.
In addition to the obvious use for pre-deployment assessment, many enterprises understand that the network and applications are constantly changing so it is necessary to do continuous assessments. For example, after a major scheduled network maintenance or upgrade during non-business hours, you can use IP SLA VO to simulate real application traffic and assess the impact of the network changes to minimize potential business disruption or even downtime. Another example is prior to an important event, you can use IP SLA VO to stress test the network and verify that it can handle the rich media traffic without impacting existing application performance.
Whether you are doing an initial assessment for a new deployment, an expansion to an existing deployment, or ongoing operations, IPSLA VO, Performance Monitor and Mediatrace are effective tools to identify and proactively resolve rich media problems across the network. Put this handy tool in your toolbox and you will like it.
Derided as an expensive box that would experience little demand when it was introduced in 2004, the Cisco CRS core routing platform has time and again proven those predictions wrong.
At its inception, some thought Cisco would never sell more than 50 CRS units. It has now sold the CRS to more than 450 service providers in 80+ countries . . . and counting.
The CRS-3 has ramped even faster than the CRS-1, shipping to more than 80 operators – including nearly 20 Tier 1s – in more than 30 countries in just the first year since it was introduced.
And Cisco isn’t stopping there. The company today announced major packet transport enhancements to the CRS-3, which was designed to serve as the foundation of the next-generation Internet and support the tremendous growth of video transmission, mobile devices and new online services.
Introducing Flexible Packet Transport for New Market Opportunities – The Cisco CRS-3 flexible packet-transport capability is a form of label switching enabled with the addition of a blade to the Cisco CRS. This scales the core network economically with fast switching, providing a high-speed, agile transport backbone.
Significant Savings With a Single Cisco CRS-3 Platform – Because the flexible packet-transport capability does not require a new standalone product to be deployed in a network, operators can easily add it to existing CRS-3 networks without expensive, time-consuming qualification testing. The CRS-3 delivers functionality that competitive solutions require three platforms to deliver. Thus, the CRS-3 lowers total cost of ownership by as much as 40 percent.
Can you believe it? It’s been one year since we launched the Cisco CRS-3 Carrier Routing System! I’m very pleased that the CRS-3 adoption rate is four times faster than the original CRS-1 series. In just a year, 80 service provider customers in more than 30 countries are deploying the platform – a true testament to the scalability and sustainability of the architecture.
Further, service provider customers across the world like AT&T, Comcast, Turkcell in the Middle East, Main One in West Africa, and Hong Kong Broadband in East Asia, among others, are unanimous about the CRS platform increasing the relevance of the network by enabling fixed-mobile convergence, value-added services and consumer broadband. We appreciate the vision and innovation demonstrated by our customers as they incorporate the CRS-3 platform into their next-generation networks.
The strong market response to the CRS-3 validates our belief that this platform is the foundation for the next-generation Internet. Unlike competitive offerings that require refreshers, upgrades or even full replacements within just a few years, the Cisco CRS platform is designed to seamlessly accommodate the extraordinary growth of video traffic, mobile devices and new online services through this decade and beyond, delivering unprecedented investment protection.
While others in the industry make promises of 100G, we are shipping more capacity than all of our competition combined. The CRS-3 and IOS XR engineering teams are bringing to market truly world class innovations in all aspects of design, development and delivery. I am very proud of the CRS development team.
There are many social media sites that have turned out to have been fads, but it’s hard to imagine the greater social media movement grinding to a halt. Author Erik Qualman says social media is here to stay, and companies must embrace it. Where do you see social media going? Do you think it’s a fad? Read More »
