When we talk to customers about collaboration and communication, we ask how they work today. Then we ask how they’d like to work in the future – and what tools and capabilities they want. Sometimes the things they want are simple, sometimes they’re more complex. But we take them all seriously – and we take them to our development teams to build into our product roadmap.
That’s what we did with Collaboration System Release 11. Customers consistently bring up three key needs, so that’s where you’ll find many of the benefits of the new release.
- Experience: Provide a delightful user experience that makes collaboration a natural and integral part of any workday, helping people be more productive.
- Simplicity: Reduce the time to first call or meeting with a complete solution that is simple to buy, deploy, manage, and use.
- Ubiquity: Extend the collaborative environment beyond organizational boundaries to include customers, partners, and mobile workers.
These aren’t new themes for us – because they’re not new themes for you.
With Release 11.0, we’re continuing to deliver more capabilities and value around these themes, starting with the user experience.
Experience
Conferencing: Multi-streaming is a new feature that allows certain Cisco endpoints to generate and/or receive concurrent video streams of differing resolutions and frame rates. Cisco TelePresence Server’s ability to intelligently switch and transcode streams provides a flexible, high-quality user experience regardless of endpoint or software client.
In the latest version of Cisco Jabber, a single mouse click lets you move a multiparty IM conversation into a videoconference hosted on TelePresence Server, WebEx, or CMR Cloud.
CMR Cloud now includes “mobile proximity join,” which automatically tells the endpoint to dial into a meeting, driving faster meeting starts.
Customer Collaboration: The new IP Phone Agent feature for Cisco Finesse provides agent functionality on Cisco IP phones without a separate agent desktop. Agents can use the phone for tasks including signing in or out, or indicating readiness for incoming calls. The Customer Care Context Service feature provides cloud-based storage, tagging, and customer-interaction data management (phone calls, emails, chats, and texts). With it, organizations can better understand a customer’s journey and provide more personalized service.
Endpoints: Two new members of the 8800 Series IP Phones support highly affordable entry to 720pHD video and Cisco Intelligent Proximity for Mobile Voice. Intelligent Proximity for Content Sharing (Cisco Proximity) lets you automatically pair your device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) with Cisco room-based endpoints when in range. Once paired, control the video and use your device to view and save snapshots of shared content.
Simplicity
Unified Communications: The new configure-to-order process simplifies ordering and deployment of Business Edition 6000.
Conferencing: Cisco TelePresence Server takes advantage of the new MM410v and MM820 hardware platforms to increase scale and improve cost effectiveness. These offerings simplify the system administrator’s ability to meeting an organization’s video conferencing requirements.
Previously, administrators had to manage screen licenses locally on each TelePresence Server.
WebEx Conferencing has enhanced notifications and controls to make meetings even easier for attendees, and we’ve given the administrator a brand new look and feel to enable easier and faster management of users
Customer Collaboration: Cisco Contact Center Express and Customer Voice Portal support for IPv6 dual-network mode simplifies migration from IPv4.
Ubiquity
Unified Communications: We’ve made several improvements to our Collaboration Edge portfolio. Expanded mobile and remote Access support for 7800, 8800, and DX Series endpoints and third-party devices let you connect to UC Manager from outside the firewall via secure VPN-less access.
We also enhanced Microsoft Lync interoperability by supporting Microsoft’s proprietary version of H.264 SVC. Cisco Expressway now allows all participants in a TelePresence Server conference to share content. Not only can Cisco endpoints share with Lync users, but also desktop Lync clients can share to Cisco endpoints.
These are just some highlights of Cisco’s Collaboration System Release 11.0. For more details, please visit our CSR page as well as our Collaboration solution page.
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Continuing to Build Experience, Simplicity, and Ubiquity
These aren’t new themes for us – because they’re not new themes for you. See how we addressed them in our two previous releases.
Collaboration System Release 10.5
- Experience: We added URI dialing, TMS Scheduling of UC Manager-based conferences, MX700 and MX800 endpoints, and Speakertrack 60. We started rolling out single-sign-on capability for administrators.
- Simplicity: We introduced Business Edition 7000 and extended Cisco Prime Collaboration capabilities with support for more endpoints.
- Ubiquity: For Jabber, we made features consistent across devices and added support for it on the Collaboration Edge. We introduced the SX10 and SX80, and increased the scale on TelePresence Conductor.
Collaboration System Release 10.0
- Experience: We introduced 7800 Series phones, the second-generation MX300 room-based endpoints, and extension mobility for TelePresence devices.
- Simplicity: We started including Cisco Prime Collaboration with Unified Communications Manager and simplified hardware costs for HCS service providers.
- Ubiquity: We added Jabber Guest to the portfolio and introduced Cisco Expressway as the core of our Collaboration Edge, VPN-less access outside of the firewall.
Excellent Announcments and update – thanks Mark
I hope that ‘configure to order’ isn’t the same as the ‘preconfigured’ we saw in 10.x – There’s very little likeliness that clients are going to ‘change their network’ to match that canned deployment model.