We are living a deep commitment to collaboration within Cisco, both in how we work and the products we create to help you work more effectively. We feel collaboration is driving the next wave of business growth, innovation, and productivity. It expands beyond transaction- and document-centric communications to encompass voice and video. Most important our collaboration architecture puts people – not applications, not hardware – at the center of business again.Let’s start with an overview of the market and industry trends that are fueling the need for better collaboration. Then we’ll outline Cisco’s strategy and our strategic differentiators. And finally, we’ll walk through how you can get started thinking about your organization’s own collaboration strategy.
Collaboration is the act of people working together to reach a common goalIt involves getting the right information to the right people at the right time to make the right decision. Such well-informed and speedy decisions in turn help organizations get work done
Note to Presenters: Slides 7-10 are optional and reinforce the concepts of “Mobile, Social, Visual & Virtual” in a generic sense. This is *NOT* a discussion of what Cisco has in each area, but a way to introduce each trend. These are representative samples – feel free to substitute others if they are more relevant to your customer’s region or industry as long as they support the same 4 themes. Narrative: As consumers have brought smart phones, tablets, social applications, and video into their personal lives, they are increasingly expecting these new capabilities in the workplace as well. This trend has sparked the adoption of smartphones and tablets like the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices as business tools. Unlike other cutting-edge technology products and gadgets had slower adoption rates outside serious “techies,” smartphones are as popular in the executive suite as they are at the shopping mall… It’s not that people simply want a device to play games or connect with friends, they want to be able to access their business information from anywhere.Meanwhile the range of devices brings challenges to IT with respect to security and manageability. We have answers.
Note to Presenters: Slides 7--8 are optional. See detail on Slide 7 presenter notes. Narrative: Social software is moving beyond its consumer roots and taking on increasing significance in the business realm. Two examples include: Companies are applying social-networking principles to enterprise collaboration, allowing users to locate expertise and information, form dynamic teams, and subscribe to content of interest.Social websites and tools have become a major factor in forming public opinion about products and services. Consumers are more influenced to make purchases based on what their friends and others say than a company’s marketing materials. It’s important to adapt your customer service to be responsive to these new social communication channels.How can you use these technologies in the organization to find the people you need, quickly, and tap into their expertise? How can you provide proactive and improved customer service based on the conversations that your customers and partners are having on Twitter, Facebook, and other sites? We have answers.
Note to Presenters: Slides 7--10 are optional. See detail on Slide 7 presenter notes. Narrative: The industry recently reached an important inflection point in the adoption of video: Video usage accounts for 51% of all Internet traffic today, and is projected to grow to exceed 90% of all Internet traffic within three years.At Cisco, we say ‘Video is the new voice.’ We strongly believe that video will become the default communications medium. Video enables an “in person” experience over distance, really from anywhere. How can you use it to your advantage? How can you index, search, and produce video in a way that is increasingly integrated into how you work, resulting in improved customer care, knowledge capture and transfer, and collaboration? We have answers.
Note to Presenters: Slides 7--10 are optional. See detail on Slide 7 presenter notes. Narrative: Until now, desktop virtualization was mutually exclusive from video and Unified Communications. No longer. Not just centralizing – but also virtualizing -- the desktops in your data center are an attractive proposition for IT in terms of compliance and total cost of ownership. But VDI -- virtual desktop integration -- addresses only data applications. It doesn’t reach into rich interactive media, mobile devices, or real-time voice and video.If your desktop operating system and apps are running in a data center thousands of miles away, and all the voice and video traffic has to route back through that data center, your voice and video experience will be choppy, pixilated, and slow. Not good. How do you get the benefits of desktop virtualization AND rich interactive experiences for your users? We have answers.
Google stat 12/20/11: http://twitter.com/#%21/arubin/status/149329329237667844
Clearing: “What does the Post-PC world mean to the business? These transitions to a more Mobile, Social, Visual, and Virtual workspace are not simply “cool technology.” They have profound business value. MOBILE example: “Salespeople want to use Android and Apple smartphones and tablets from any location to stay in touch with customers, view contracts, get management approvals, and other tasks. PC-based UC apps are not available for their devices, which would cut them off. You need an architecture that has native support for the new-generation devices – including the ones that don’t even exist yet – to allow your team’s highly productive collaboration from anywhere, anytime” SOCIAL example: “People communicate about companies and their products/services in real time using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media through commenting, reviews, and personal posts. Word spreads quickly, which can affect your reputation in less than a day before you realize it. Your sales could spike or you could get slammed by negative attention – all starting from a few posts. Traditional reactive-mode, let-them-call-us customer service is no longer enough – you need to monitor what’s being said and proactively reach out to customers in their preferred medium to be part of the conversation rather than just the object of it” VISUAL example: “Let’s say you want to enable video for all your knowledge workers so they can communicate better with suppliers and other offices around the world. The proprietary video codecs of PC apps don’t interoperate easily with other equipment, which limits their reach. You need standards-based, high-quality video available everywhere with a mouse click or finger swipe -- whether on a mobile phone, tablet, laptop, conference-room, or desktop” VIRTUAL example: “IT can implement desktop virtualization for a Finance team to reduce total cost of ownership, while improving data security. A PC-based environment provides adequate data access to corporate apps for users in the office, but doesn’t allow rich video and voice UC apps, or access from a mobile environment. But integrated unified communications over a virtual desktop integration (VXI) link, with optional mobility, solves the problem. Transition: An architecture based on Windows PCs and servers just wasn’t designed for this new world and new working paradigm. It’s time to move forward.
Clearing: “Let’s take a look at how the traditional compute stack has fared in light of recent innovations.” Once the gold standard in enterprise IT, the ‘PC World’ has essentially been shattered. New alternative technologies have challenged every layer from applications to the operating system and even the devices themselves. The monolithic PC stack has exploded into a multitude of alternative devices, operating systems, and architectures – what former Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie called the ‘Post-PC World.’ Applications: Traditional business applications like email are being blended with new social applications that unite People, Communities and Information. The old provisioning model of a ‘standard PC image’ is moving toward a model, where users select the apps that meet their needs. But how well does this model work for an enterprise? How do you ensure security and policy control in mission-critical environments? Operating Systems: No longer the de facto enterprise operating system, Windows has been joined by MacOS, iOS, Android, and others. Choice is good, but unless your architecture can support multiple operating systems equally well, your operating system can effectively become a barrier to collaboration Server Architecture: The traditional client/server architecture has evolved significantly; Cloud is now an accepted mainstream deployment option. Equally profound, the desktop has experienced change in the form of desktop virtualization. There are obvious benefits in terms of TCO and data security – but the real question is how you ensure that real-time voice and video work well in a virtualized environment. Devices: If one area has completely transformed the IT landscape in the last few years, it’s devices. The mainstream PC is no longer alone – it has been joined by 3.6 billion mobile devices, tablets, thin clients, and purpose-built video devices. Transition: “But what does any of this have to do with running my business?”
All these changes have brought us to an environment where people want to collaborate across devices. They want to use the device they prefer or the one at hand. Enabling this level of choice requires an integrated architecture and an architectural approach that abstracts away the infrastructure and provides an integrated experience to the users, securely. (top). It begins with our integrated collaboration architecture that enables people to collaborate anywhere, on any device, accessing any type of content with the control, policy, and flexibility that IT departments require.Let’s talk about these three ‘anys’ in a bit more detail. Anywhere. For end users, this means enabling effective collaboration whether you are at home, in the office, in a hotel, or at a soccer game. Cisco delivers the richest possible experience wherever you happen to be. You’re not limited to email or phone calls once you set foot outside corporate bounds, but can instead enjoy video, UC, and presence as if you were in the office.For IT, anywhere means that we allow alternative deployment models, whether on premises, cloud based, or a hybrid. The result? We enable innovation around not just intra-company collaboration but also inter-company collaboration.Any Device. This means supporting the end points and platforms that people use today. Endpoints include PCs and phones, but increasingly mean smart mobile devices and tablets such as Cius and the iPad. And support for multiple devices means support for multiple platforms including Android, Mac, RIM, Symbian, and trusty old Windows.Any content. Access to any content requires connection to any media type in the applications that you work in today, including those from Microsoft and IBM. This means not just data and voice, but increasingly includes video for the most engaging interactions, with the best possible experience for each participant. One video call could include one person using WebEx on a smart phone in the airport connected with office participants using high-quality Telepresence, and someone at home using high-quality video on a laptop or Cius mobile device.Only Cisco offers standards-based support and vendor- and platform-interoperability for people-centered collaboration. And it’s not limited to Cisco applications, but includes native interoperability for others including those from Apple, Android, RIM, Nokia, Microsoft, and IBM. Transition: What do we think this looks like?
Clearing: “We believe you need a New Collaborative Workspace that inherently supports the new capabilities we’ve outlined. This provides insight into what we believe the Workspace of the Future and some of its essential characteristics look like.We believe the New Collaborative Workspace will be more Mobile, Social, Visual, and Virtual.Mobile allows a consistent user experience on any device, including smartphones and tabletsSocial incorporates the best principles of social networks in an enterprise settingVisual means inherently video-based and incorporating all visual content, including recording, transcribing, tagging, etc.Virtual means converged with VDI/virtualized endpoints
This is accomplished by through an architecture designed at all levels for collaboration
It’s not just the device that you hold in your hand (though Cisco makes those too), but the solutions “under the hood” that really matter. It’s Cisco’s purpose-built network approach that ultimately allows that any-to-any to happen. Other companies – our competitors -- often talk about OTTP with adaptive codecs without considering the long-term implications. Competitors that once touted over-the-top capabilities are forming alliances to try to provide network-aware capabilities. But, theirs is a retrofit approach versus Cisco’s purpose-built approach. For example, Cisco Medianet understands that all packets are not created equal. From intelligent video routing to bandwidth management to diagnostics that ensure SLAs and auto-configuration that drives operational effectiveness, a Cisco architecture is constructed with the end in mind.Cisco delivers some collaboration experiences that are immersive like no one else
To be clear, it all begins with unified communications for us. UC is not just our control point for voice, it’s also the center for video. Whether the services are based in the cloud or on premises, we enable that any-to-any from a mobile to a device and all points in between.
Let’s talk about the core elements of Cisco’s strategy for handling these market requirements. Cisco is investing in five areas to close the gaps to reaching truly integrated collaboration. Very simply we are focusing on interoperability, mobility, video, social, and virtualization.The first is an interoperable, open architecture. It’s impossible for IT to fully control all the devices and applications in today’s environment. And increasingly, as employees want features from their consumer devices in their work tools, IT needs an interoperable, open architecture that allows for device and application diversity. Our goal is to enable any device or application to leverage the same core of collaborative services that our own devices and applications access. Related to this is the need for secure mobility to allow people and teams to work anywhere, anytime. It’s a fact that business regularly happens outside the four walls of the office -- and it increasingly happens on the smartphones and tablets that are quickly becoming ubiquitous. Our goal is to provide a secure UC and collaboration environment that spans the most popular business devices, while preserving enterprise security and compliance. Video communications has becomean increasingly central technology to collaboration. With dispersed teams and reduced travel, real-time communications-- specifically video -- is more critical to rapidly build trust and help people work together effectively. We consider video to be a transformative element that will become as easy to use as e-mail is today. It will be pervasive -- on the desktop through real-time and on-demand video to high-def Telepresence, video surveillance, security, and beyond. Video is a core element of the entire portfolio, integrated throughout rather than just in a number of point products.Enterprise social software will change the way organizations work. The rigidly structured, isolated teams that were traditionally created in most organizations are giving way to more fluid, ad-hoc communities. This requires enterprise applications that are designed to operate within an organization and provide the same ease of use, speed, and ubiquity that social networks offer in the consumer world. These applications will combine these features with enterprise-level security, availability, quality of service, and reliability.Supporting flexible deployment models based on a company’s requirements, IT resources, and priorities means taking advantage of both the enterprise network and the cloud, each with key roles in enabling a comprehensive collaboration platform—especially for inter-company collaboration. Our vision is to blend the best of both worlds—coupling the robustness, security, and performance of the enterprise network with the openness and flexibility of cloud computing. Solutions that focus on just one or a few of these five elements will not be effective. Our goal is to provide an integrated experience for end users—whether that user is a customer in a store, an employee in a bank, a forklift operator on the manufacturing floor, or a nurse in a hospital. We don’t want to simply optimize business processes. We want to enable new and better experiences that translate into tangible and differentiated business value.
Let’s take a quick look at Cisco’s collaboration portfolio, comprising four categories focused around established IT functions. Unified Communicationsincludes our IP telephony offerings, back-end infrastructure, plus hard and soft endpoints (voice)Customer Collaborationincludes agent desktop tools, IVR, and software for the core contact center and analytics (contact center)Telepresence includes not just best-in-class synchronous in-person communications but also offerings designed to ease the creation and sharing of video content (video)Collaboration Applicationsinclude three discreet offerings: Cisco WebEx, Cisco Jabber, and Cisco Quad. (desktop software)Customers can deploy these as they desire -- on premises or from the cloud, either through our partners or directly from Cisco. In many cases, they can also be provisioned in a hybrid “best of both worlds” mode. Cisco has market-leading components in each category, but the compelling story is in how they work together. Increasingly, leading industry analysts recommend that their clients take this sort of integrated portfolio approach when making strategic purchasing decisions.Customizing the right solution for each individual customer is where professional services add additional value. Either through Cisco Services or our partners, they can bring best practices to the table that will accelerate your time to value. Transition: I hope you now have a good sense of the breadth and range of the collaboration portfolio. I’d like to turn now to what makes it so cohesive, and that’s our collaboration architecture.
At Cisco, we’re taking a more comprehensive view than the silo’d domain-centric approach – we view this as a “full stack” problem, very much in the way represented in this chart from the Corporate Executive Board. Meeting the business need for collaboration is not only a desktop software issue, it’s deeply rooted in the infrastructure you need to power the experience and break down the silos between individual tools sets.It’s reliable, scalable, high-performance communications infrastructure brought together with both existing and new types of applications that creates the combination positioned to address the business requirements for collaboration. That’s the opportunity in front of us. And in looking to meet the needs of the business, we’re beginning to see leading companies adjust to meet today’s organizational challenge of how to best support such an evolving function. But while there’s little question that the trend is toward convergence between IT silos – reminiscent of what we saw between voice and data not so long ago - we don’t think that the tightly coupled largely proprietary product suites you see from others provides the right approach.
Collaboration delivers value to the enterprise with - Operational ROI by avoiding unnecessary costs- Productivity ROI by improving processes and interactions - Strategic ROI through business transformation. And, time and again, customers validate these value points.
Collaboration is the investment of the decade. It can be a competitive differentiator for today’s business, putting people at the center of the interactions.Increasingly, employees are customers are demanding anytime and anywhere communications that adapt to their desired way of communicating. IT can support these shifts and begin the journey to improved productivity, innovation, and growth.
Let’s take a quick look at Cisco’s collaboration portfolio, comprising four categories focused around established IT functions. Unified Communicationsincludes our IP telephony offerings, back-end infrastructure, plus hard and soft endpoints (voice)Customer Collaborationincludes agent desktop tools, IVR, and software for the core contact center and analytics (contact center)Telepresence includes not just best-in-class synchronous in-person communications but also offerings designed to ease the creation and sharing of video content (video)Collaboration Applicationsinclude three discreet offerings: Cisco WebEx, Cisco Jabber, and Cisco Quad. (desktop software)Customers can deploy these as they desire -- on premises or from the cloud, either through our partners or directly from Cisco. In many cases, they can also be provisioned in a hybrid “best of both worlds” mode. Cisco has market-leading components in each category, but the compelling story is in how they work together. Increasingly, leading industry analysts recommend that their clients take this sort of integrated portfolio approach when making strategic purchasing decisions.Customizing the right solution for each individual customer is where professional services add additional value. Either through Cisco Services or our partners, they can bring best practices to the table that will accelerate your time to value. Transition: I hope you now have a good sense of the breadth and range of the collaboration portfolio. I’d like to turn now to what makes it so cohesive, and that’s our collaboration architecture.
At the core of every communication and collaboration system there is a need for a solid, well-developed and proven engine that manages every interaction with users, endpoints, and applications. Cisco Unified Communications Manager is the most widely deployed such engine in the world with more than 40 million deployments worldwide. This is the differentiator allowing the any-to-any and the Mobile, Social, Visual, and Virtual experiences that take collaboration to the next level. Cisco Unified Communications Manager was created as a platform to integrate communications and collaboration on premises, in the cloud, or as hybrid approach. It was not created to simply replicate an old PBX, as a retrofit, or as a back way into a network-based solution. Rather, it is based on the same underlying technologies of the Internet; it has always been a network-based platform. Unified Communications Manager Delivers core collaboration and communication services Applies to every element of a customer environment Can be used by every endpoint and application deployed in an enterpriseCan provide every interaction from mobility to identity, and security to licensing to session management
Today’s workforce demands more than voice and video. Cisco Unified Communications Manager is designed for mobility and messaging, enabling you to work anywhere with any device capabilities using features such asSimultaneous ring on all phones or single number reachSeamless transition of ongoing calls between mobile and desk phones, with desk & mobile pick upTrue extension mobility by allowing forwarding to a mobile device, home phone, or any other phoneMaintaining a single voice mailbox across multiple phone numbers, which meets compliance standards when required Placing mobile calls through Cisco Unified Call Manager remotely through a mobile phone to gain cost efficiencies of the office system
It’s not just about the software behind the scenes. The Cisco Unified IP Phone portfolio is a comprehensive and market-leading IP Communications portfolio offering choice of endpoints. Arguably the most comprehensive portfolio in the industry, the product options address your organization’s visual and virtual needs.Basic voice endpoints, such as the 3900 Series IP phones for simple, cost-effective business deployments Endpoints such as the 6900 and 7900 Series for more advanced business communications needs, including voice and virtualization for data support Advanced multimedia solutions, including high-quality video and video interoperability with the 8900 and 9900 Series phones Cisco also offers solutions for mobile workers, including WLAN handsets and the Cisco Cius, a mobile collaboration device designed to extend robust and secure collaboration, computing, and communications, wherever you are.
The Cisco Cius is purpose-built for business. It is a productivity tool delivering unparalleled mobile collaboration. It looks like the consumer tablet devices, but incorporates key business capabilities to meet the needs of tomorrow’s innovative workspace. In a single unified touch-based experience, the Cius brings together out-of-the-box functionality of Cisco’s suite of collaboration capabilities, such as Jabber, WebEx, and UC. The IT team can configure a Cius in a couple hours versus other market solutions, where it may take up to a month to stitch together a configuration of comparable applications that are simply “bolted on,“ introducing a variety of risk factors that only increase as the number of users increase. Cius delivers on Mobile Telepresence. Using HD standards-based video to conference with Cisco TelePresence endpoints (and HQ video for those not supporting HD), all users can participate in real-time, face-to-face conversations – building trust and accelerating decision making. This is important - considering analyst projections that 90% of traffic will be video by 2013. Cius provides the ability to create content – not just consume it. You can do this regardless of whether virtual, as a VXI client for an optimized multimedia experience (that non-Cisco solutions can’t offer), or locally delivered should connectivity to your virtual workspace be unavailable. Cius delivers an innovative mobile applications ecosystem with AppHQ and AppHQ Manager. Business applications are easy to find and Cisco-validated through an accessible, intuitive user experience similar to other online marketplaces. IT benefits with mobile apps they can trust, plus reporting to control app costs. IT teams can create their own private, personalized applications centers–hosted by Cisco with AppHQ Manager – an industry first. And developers can create applications and access Cisco’s large global installed base for incremental revenue. It’s a win-win for customers and developers alike. Other attributes of the Cisco Cius are:Cost-effective choice in services. Cius is the only solution in the marketing supporting wired Ethernet with the HD media station, 802.11 Wi-Fi, and 4G.Built-in security for hardware and software. Remember, Cisco knows security and supplies IP Communications solutions to 85% of the Fortune 500. Investment protection. Cius features investment protection for Unified Communications Manager as it extends beyond UC and Collaboration to include mobile device management (MDM). The essential capabilities to manage Cius, even when remote, come with the device. Cisco is partnering with Sybase’s Afaria and Mobile Iron to add more capabilities as well. (Good Technologies is in progress as of Nov 2011).Accessible service and support. We know users expect more from high-end portable devices. Cisco offers enterprise-grade, 24-hour replacements, tiered warranty services, and one number to call. Have confidence that support is there – if and when it’s needed. There is no need to find a local retail store – we know business can’t stop to wait for you.
Cius offers flexible access to applications by making available several innovative deployment options as part of its applications ecosystem. Access to Cius applications is available with Cisco AppHQ, which comes standard with every Cius shipped. Part of the Cisco Developer Network marketplace, Cisco AppHQ is an industry-first applications management and delivery ecosystem specifically for the enterprise.Security: At the forefront of Cisco AppHQ is security, which means you have a “trusted source” for Cius business applications. Every application within Cisco AppHQ will be Cisco-validated and functionality tested, whether developed by Cisco or a 3rd party Android developer partner. Using Unified Communications Manager, IT can control access to external application marketplaces enterprisewide or on a per user, per group, per device basis. This gives enterprise IT a degree of flexibility and mobile applications management controls that are not available elsewhere.Management: Cisco AppHQ delivers powerful applications management and reporting tools for enterprise IT, while giving users an experience like that in consumer marketplaces when they search – except the sole focus is on business applications.Marketplace: Cisco AppHQ also provides an avenue to promote and sell business applications to Cisco customers. With a section focused on developer needs, Android developers can learn how to develop business-differentiating applications for the Cius (such as those that integrate Cisco UC and Collaboration capabilities). Once submitted, apps are reviewed and, if approved, published in AppHQ. Flexibility: As an industry first, Cisco AppHQ Manager lets you host a custom applications center specific to your enterprise. This allows you to make available only those apps that are of interest and benefit to your enterprise. You can select apps from AppHQ or other Android marketplaces (if desired), create your own in-house apps, or use or third-party java programming talent. Some examples of how you might customize your center include: Adding enterprise-grade features, such as purchase by P.O.Assigning/denying app access by user groups you defineUsing reporting tools to understand who is downloading apps (or not) to gain further control around costsCustomizing of the look and feel of the app center
The Cisco Unified Communications Manager portfolio is ultimately supported by a full lifecycle approach to collaboration allowing quick provisioning, rapid upgrades, and consistency as new capabilities are added. This suite includes… Provisioning Manager Speeds rollouts and adoption of Cisco UC Services. Reduces time to add users from 20 minutes to 1-2 minutes. Simplifies management, reduces costs and skill sets needed to manage UC – which reduces total cost of ownership.Ensures consistency in configuration, reduces configuration errors, and provides audit trails which results in fewer escalations from your customers.Operations Manager & Service MonitorIsolates an issue, speeds time to resolution, and ensures service quality, meaning fewer technical support calls and increased customer satisfaction. Service Statistics Manager Provides capacity planning, historical reporting, and resource optimization. In general, the tools support both Enterprise and Managed Services for implementations with as few as 500 users to those in excess of 45,000 users with multiple instances of each product.
So, as we look at the five main areas of Cisco UC focus it should be clear that Cisco…Continues to build from its industry-leadership in UC Is expanding from its core to better enable video, mobility and the management of the ever-expanding landscape of collaborationAllows for the “any device” enterprise reality as well as continuing to offer enterprise-tuned devices such as the Cius and IP phones Collaboration that is mobile, social, visual and virtual within and among the enterprise landscape requires a network architecture that is built to accommodate – from the start and not built from an endpoint-back-in perspective – too much is at stake in today’s enterprise.
Let’s take a quick look at Cisco’s collaboration portfolio, comprising four categories focused around established IT functions. Unified Communicationsincludes our IP telephony offerings, back-end infrastructure, plus hard and soft endpoints (voice)Customer Collaborationincludes agent desktop tools, IVR, and software for the core contact center and analytics (contact center)Telepresence includes not just best-in-class synchronous in-person communications but also offerings designed to ease the creation and sharing of video content (video)Collaboration Applicationsinclude three discreet offerings: Cisco WebEx, Cisco Jabber, and Cisco Quad. (desktop software)Cisco has market-leading components in each category, but the compelling story is in how they work together. Increasingly, leading industry analysts recommend that their clients take this sort of integrated portfolio approach when making strategic purchasing decisions.The idea of “customer collaboration” is really an evolution of contact centers and telephone-based customer service. There’s never been a leader in telephony that wasn’t also a leader in the Contact Center, which makes sense because telephone-based customer service was and remains the most prevalent way of serving customers. So, as Cisco established leadership in IP Telephony, we were also laying the foundation to ultimately become #1 in contact center. Today we are #2 in the worldwide market, and are projected to take the overall leadership position in North America within the next 1-2 years, with the rest of the world soon after that. Transition: With that as context, let’s delve into Customer Collaboration.
Clearing: Customer Collaboration—a term and concept we introduced in 2010--is really the evolution of the contact center. Consider it in context with the pillars of customer service, the items that are typically in place with many contact centers: routing and reporting, speech self service, integration with the enterprise, CRM integration, and multichannel contact. First is the routing and reporting engine, commonly known as the automatic contact distributor, or ACD. The traditional “brains” of the contact center, ACD is a vital piece of any customer collaboration strategy, since telephone-based customer service is still the primary channel customers choose.Next, speech self-service, or interactive voice response (IVR) provides a way to queue calls and prompt customers for basic information such as “press 2 for sales.” This is an important way to increase efficiency by offloading certain calls to an automated system to free agents—real people—to handle more demanding requests. A more recent addition to the landscape is integration with the enterprise using Unified Communications. This is often demonstrated through the integration of presence and instant messaging so that agents can bring experts into a customer conversation. Tapping into knowledge within the employee base is an important value feature for the contact center, and UC integration makes it much more realistic than it has ever been before. Our last pillar is multichannel contact and CRM integration, which bring in channels like email, web, and text chat. These capabilities came to the forefront with the explosion of e-commerce around the year 2000. Still, not everyone uses these traditional tools within the Contact Center although they’re considered “table stakes” capabilities and are increasingly expected as standard. [2nd build] At Cisco, when we talk about Customer Collaboration and think about how customers want to be treated, it’s built on those four pillars but we add a few things… like social media… like video-enabled customer care… Our offerings adds more ways of interacting, adapting to where the customers are in an increasingly proactive way. For instance, a customer care agent needs access to different pieces of information. We see changes in the agent application or desktop environment that incorporate easier interfaces. We see greater need for capturing media and doing analytics on phone, video, or data interactions. This goes beyond the compliance recording necessary in industries such as financial services. For instance, real-time analytics can add tremendous value to understanding trends and predicting customer behavior. And, those in the customer care space want the choice to host these capabilities or receive them in a virtualized manner. Transition: So, customer collaboration is more than contact center. It builds on the traditional tenets of an established industry and increasingly adapts to customers in a mobile, social, visual, and virtual way.
Clearing: Customer behavior is changing as expectations for customer service are rising. Good customer service has become a competitive differentiator. The reality is that most customers today would rather find their own information before resorting to contact a customer-service representative. And they want to start on the web.Customers are mobile and they expect access and response via new media – both social and visual. Still, there are plenty of people who take to the phones, especially for complex scenarios. Transition: Leading companies will understand the changing nature of customer desires and embrace newer trends in their customer care approach
Clearing: Customers are changing. They want to know that they can get what they need whenever they want it, and get it from a variety of channels. But with the increased expectations from customers for anytime, anywhere services, comes the complexity of predicting trends and allocating resources. Contact Centers once were able to predict the volume and timing of incoming customer calls and staff accordingly… certain regions call at different times… some people call from work, at home, after dinner… Staffing according to predicted call volume let companies staff while minimizing the risk that agents would be sitting around or conversely being overwhelmed or burned out. Mobility has changed the game in allocating call center resources. Predictable interactions are a harder balance to strike when you have calls being made while someone is waiting in traffic or has a few extra minutes between meetings -- and unlimited minutes on a mobile calling plan. Social media has also sparked a significant change in customer behavior, especially in the area of customer complaints. It used to be that complaints were held to small circle… some neighbors and friends… Now with Twitter and other social media apps, a complaint can go viral and create a PR nightmare for a company. Transition: But these changing expectations are only the latest in a continuum of customer care challenges, and customer care innovations over the last 30 or so years. It is important to think about what we call the three waves of customer collaboration innovation.
Transition: We think about the contact center industry over the last 30 to 40 years as having gone through three distinct waves of investment: cost, relationship, experience. Organizations are at various stages in when it comes to the approach, capabilities, and success metrics for their contact centers. To really understand today’s trends, it helps to understand the history of innovation in the Contact Center.These waves are continuous and cumulative, building upon the innovations of prior generations of technologies and customer expectations. A successful customer care strategy takes into account, and tries to balance, three forces of effective care: Cost: Lowering effective cost-to-serve through occupancy, technology, and infrastructure-related improvements; also effectively controlling the customer-management process e.g. predictable outcomes. In short, optimizing the costs and process within the four walls of the contact centerRelationship: Dynamically change service based on customer value in routing, self/assisted care, and agent selection. For example, knowing your customer context and matching customer, channel, and resource. In short, optimizing the interaction between the contact center and the customer.Experience: Customers are moving beyond channels-of-control and expect access to new media like video, mobile, and social. People throughout your company interact with customers -- front office, back office, retail, branch, field, contact center. Consider the retail experience that customers have, for instance, in an Apple Store or Nordstrom – and the loyalty that can be generated from those interactions. The challenge of this third wave is bringing these new customer touch points into the network of people and systems in your company.Transition: Let’s take a deeper dive into this evolution and look at the strategy, management mantra, and metrics that are driving each wave of innovation.
Clearing: The waves of innovation have followed changes in how contact centers have been managed. [Build 1] The early Contact Center was a place, focused on predictable outcomes and cost controls. The predominant strategy throughout the 1980s, and the source for the majority of the best practice over the last 30 years, was a concrete building on cheap real estate with ready access to low-cost labor. The management model is operational–and the metrics reflect this focus. It was all about speed, response, and managing costs. The view was more about customer care as a cost center than a strategic asset. As customers moved to the web, cost management as the driving metric became a challenge.[Build 2] As business and expectations evolved in the 1990s, the contact center went virtual, clustered around web, IVR, and CRM systems. Instead of the process being controlled by people in a building, it gravitated toward workflows and islands of data in systems. This is where the shift starts. Customer interactions are strategic—securing new customers is more expensive than retaining existing ones. Since the focus was on the customer relationship, marketing became a key component of customer care. The metrics that formed all required customer context, history, and knowledge. Creating concepts like increasing “wallet share” for a financial institution as an example. Customer satisfaction became very important as customer care became an opportunity to sell and to generate leads. Companies tracked close rates as historical preferences became tools to aid sales to existing customers. This is still the most common focus for customer care. But now customers are moving again – to social, video, SMS, etc. And, the resources to successfully manage these customers are no longer just in the contact center, IVR, or web your company manages – they are all over the value chain.[Build 3] The contact center is evolving again, this time to an enterprise service. The process for listening and responding must be available to and orchestrated across a variety of people and systems both inside the company and beyond. Contact Centers make promises and resolve issues that the entire organization needs to satisfy. One of the secrets of first-call resolution–contact centers don’t resolve complex issues, they rely on resources all over the organization to make it happen. The metrics have shifted to things like: Net Promoter Score, cycle time from interaction open to close, and most important, first-contact resolution.[Build 4] What’s important to recognize, is that across any of these waves, the contact center can achieve a significant return on investment. No matter what wave you find you company in, you can make a business case for improvement and positive ROI. Transition: What is the key to successfully managing this market transition? How can you reduce risk and get the most value out of your contact center investments?
Clearing: We can identify important innovations that characterize the key value represented in each wave. Wave 1 is characterized by a cost-management focus and the techniques to manage costs. Cost-management technologies like toll-free telephone service and ACD started in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but the industry continues to deliver new and innovative ways to better manage efficiency – such as SIP networking, cloud computing, and server and desktop virtualization.Wave 2 and its metrics require context, history, and knowledge of the customer. The 1990s accelerated an explosion in technologies like CRM – and continue today with channel integration and improved analytics. Companies that started in Wave 2 focused on integration to CRM, IVR ACD, and desktop. Cisco’s own call center platform was born in this wave and features a strong multichannel offering, CTI integration technologies, and next-generation IVR platforms. The architectural basis of technology suppliers born in Wave 2 actually serves as the best choice for navigating all three waves. Wave 3 has some clearly identifiable trends that have emerged over the last few years – including social, video, and enterprise collaboration. This wave will continue to challenge industry leaders as customers increasingly turn to new media and social networks to interact. The key question is who can help companies bridge the gap to the next wave of innovation? Who has a track record of capturing market transitions? [Build] Cisco has the anchoring technologies to span multiple waves – delivering value continuously. Cisco customers have enjoyed investment protection across these waves of investment – we are successfully helping companies with these market transitions as they move through these waves The routing engines developed to serve the cost-savings imperative have evolved into highly effective customer-segmentation engines. Customer Voice Portal is not just a self-care platform, it proves the architecture for intelligent network queuing. New anchoring products like Social Miner and Quad will lead into the next wave of innovation with investment protection – without rip-and-replace or wholesale reinvention of your architectural and business process investments. Transition: With organizations requiring contact center platforms that can help navigate all of the waves of innovation, the right architecture is vital.
Clearing: The prevailing architecture for contact centers has changed along with the waves of innovation. Twenty-five years ago, if you were an enterprise architect building a customer-care solution, your most important task might have been the ACD RFP. The ACD was the ”center of gravity” and a 7-10 year investment decision. These were big refrigerator-sized cabinets weighing hundreds of pounds. Replacing or physically moving one was really the only window to upgrade. This “big iron” architecture often is described as a “walled garden” and it efficiently routed voice calls and satisfied the cost savings imperatives of early-stage needs. The ACD offered limited interfaces to external systems. Enterprises wanting to do more than address costs were forced into “science projects” with risky, time-consuming and expensive integrations. [Build 1 ] Now the ACD is an integral part of a distributed system with other technologies such as IVR, CTI, and workforce optimization as part of the equation. These systems are equally as important as the “big iron” ACD. The architectural shift to distributed systems delivers significant advantages to your ability to segment customers, create virtual contact centers across multiple locations, and improve agent occupancy. With these improvements and distributed architecture, contact centers can see improvements in the performance metrics of Wave 1. [Build 2] In Wave 3, the emerging architecture is less complex and more flexible than Wave 2’s distributed model. Now more than ever, getting application functionality and customization to customers on any device, across any modality is critical and can be a competitive advantage. The contact center becomes an enterprise service where the network is the platform. Rather than patching together disparate “best of breed” third-party solutions, this architecture delivers all the services required to provide leading-edge customer service, wherever those services are required in the network. Transition: How are companies executing across the three waves now?
Cisco’s comprehensive approach has always started from the premise that an intelligent network is the platform that unifies solutions and sets the foundation for ever-changing market dynamics. With that foundation in place, we help address important technology imperatives. Wave 1Comprehensive product portfolio including virtualizing sites, services, and desktops; SIP trunking to optimize network and carrier costs; and improved operational cradle-to-grave reporting (IVR, routing, agent selection, transfers, etc.).Successful delivery of site virtualization with Cisco Unified Contact Center that helps customers gain an enterprise view of the customer transactionLower deployment and support costs with a portfolio that includes server and desktop virtualization technologies Cost savings and improved network management through a powerful set of technologies to help you integrate SIP networking into your strategy Reporting tools that wrap around every interaction, regardless of channel Wave 2Enhanced intelligence of routed interactions before they are delivered, creating intelligent queuing at the network border to provide contextual messagingImproved integration of channels to provide a single view of the interaction.New options like assisted care where agents can help customers navigate online and self-care systems for improved future containment rates resulting from our integration between our self-care and contact-center platform enable new options Wave 3Investments are focused on moving the customer management process into new channels like social, but there is also a tremendous increase in branch/retail and contact center integration. Proactive care is also on the rise – not only proactive notification but the integration of the communications network into your company’s workflow. For example, many people use Cisco SocialMiner to find and respond to positive and negative customer experiences in social forums, but are also finding that responding to life events (marriage, change in status, etc) is a real growth area.Finally, the real value of front-to-back-office integration is aligning companies around the commitments of the customer-facing elements of your value network. Put simply, the customer service representatives need the help of the rest of the organization to solve customer concerns – and drive first-contact resolution. Transition: It should be clear now that solving customer challenges is not just the role of the formal contact center. Additionally, the tools required are not all contact center tools. Let’s see how Collaboration solutions can combine to provide outstanding customer experiences.
Clearing: Cisco Contact Center solutions sit on top of the industry’s leading Unified Communications architecture. And contact center solutions within that architecture are uniquely able to address the challenges that come with four of the most important market trends today: Mobile, Social, Visual, and Virtual. Let’s look at how customer collaboration addresses each of these trends.[Build 1] Mobile: With mobility, both customers and the customer care organizations are able to more conveniently solve problems and produce positive outcomes. For example, a formal contact center can utilize mobility solutions to untether their supervisors within the walls of the contact center. Or they can use mobility to provide access to a supervisor even when the supervisor is away from the physical center, by providing key applications on a mobile device like a Cisco Cius, for instance. From the customer side, you can provide unique applications to let your customers access information via mobile applications; such as a visual IVR application on a smart phone.[Build 2] Social: The trend toward social business has far-reaching impact for customer collaboration. We recognized this trend early and introduced Cisco SocialMiner in November 2010. SocialMiner allows you to search social networks important mentions of your products or brand, and puts that information into a contact center workflow, where the right person can act on it at the right time. Beyond that, Cisco has extended the paradigm of enterprise social software into the customer care arena with Cisco Quad. We built the Finesse desktop—an application for contact center agents to easily and rapidly find information to be able to work with customers—on the same technology as Cisco Quad.Finally, we see significant customer collaboration use cases for video-sharing capabilities available with Cisco Show-and-Share. Agents can share relevant video-based information with customers, or use video as a knowledge base to solve customer problems.[Build 3] Visual: Visual aspects of customer collaboration are now becoming an everyday occurrence whether a kiosk at a retail location; a dedicated TelePresence room in a bank branch; agents using online video to share product information; or video conferencing between the care center, field rep, and back office expert. Agents can also create video to help inform and provide directions to customers. [Build 4] Virtual: Finally, customer collaboration is a terrific use case for both server and desktop virtualization. Enterprises are increasingly utilizing Cisco UCS servers as part of their data-center virtualization strategies for contact center applications. And the real-time nature of customer service via the telephone requires the desktop-virtualization approach that we’re taking with Cisco VXI. The use cases for home-based agents are particularly strong, as the need to reduce equipment and data leads to cost savings and greater information security. Transition: All of these use cases push the technology requirements far beyond a traditional contact center portfolio – they require a broad portfolio of technology and a reliable partner with a history of navigating market transitions. And, again, this level of care and capabilities are possible on a unified platform built for collaboration.
Clearing - Cisco’s contact center architecture for the enterprise was born during the Wave 2 innovation discussed earlier. Its function is flexibility – a single framework with routing, scripting, reporting, and a flexible set of peripheral interfaces that allow us to bring in new media channels, to integrate to 3rd party systems, and to integrate inbound and outbound voice applications with Internet applications such as real-time chat, web collaboration, and e-mail. With this, a single agent can support multiple interactions, simultaneously. Since each interaction is unique and may require individualized service, Cisco provides contact center solutions to manage customer interactions based on almost any contact attribute.The Cisco architecture does not depend on a media type – as channel of voice becomes channel of voice we adapt with the same core elements. Even agent interfaces change from traditional CTI APIs to web services interfaces without the expense of ripping-and-replacing the core framework. The entire Cisco solution set has cradle-to-grave operational reporting to show a universal view of the customer interaction. This provides customer care teams with a “surround sound” of its customers, allowing them to engage them by listening, tracking, troubleshooting, and creating closed-loop interactions. Transition – This flexible architecture is not limited to the enterprise contact center; we take a similar approach with Contact Center Express
Clearing – Contact Center Express is a powerful platform for smaller contact centers requiring an all-in-one approach. From the base functionality of inbound and outbound voice, including IVR capabilities, CTI and CRM integration and powerful reporting, you can increase functionality through a variety of options including enabling new channels, workforce optimization, and remote agent capabilities. Transition – Contact Center Express is powerful, but easy to use and maintain, and can be an important part of a customer collaboration strategy.
Cisco entered the customer care market because it is consistent with our vision – bringing your customers into the network of people that make up your organization’s value chain. Our portfolio goes beyond customer care to help you navigate current and future market transitions with reduced risk and the best value. Because we understand that you are executing across many dimensions of care – cost, relationship and experience -- we are committed to making it easier for you to grow your customer relationships in new methods and traditional ones.
Let’s take a quick look at Cisco’s collaboration portfolio, comprising four categories focused around established IT functions. Unified Communicationsincludes our IP telephony offerings, back-end infrastructure, plus hard and soft endpoints (voice)Customer Collaborationincludes agent desktop tools, IVR, and software for the core contact center and analytics (contact center)Telepresence includes not just best-in-class synchronous in-person communications but also offerings designed to ease the creation and sharing of video content (video)Collaboration Applicationsinclude three discreet offerings: Cisco WebEx, Cisco Jabber, and Cisco Quad. (desktop software)Customers can deploy these as they desire -- on premises or from the cloud, either through our partners or directly from Cisco. In many cases, they can also be provisioned in a hybrid “best of both worlds” mode. Cisco has market-leading components in each category, but the compelling story is in how they work together. Increasingly, leading industry analysts recommend that their clients take this sort of integrated portfolio approach when making strategic purchasing decisions.Customizing the right solution for each individual customer is where professional services add additional value. Either through Cisco Services or our partners, they can bring best practices to the table that will accelerate your time to value. Transition: I hope you now have a good sense of the breadth and range of the collaboration portfolio. I’d like to turn now to what makes it so cohesive, and that’s our collaboration architecture.
Video and the visual medium deliver the most natural collaboration experience possible. Video is transforming the way organizations communicate and collaborate with colleagues as well as with customers and partners. Organizations are starting to realize the power of bringing people -- one of their most important business assets -- together at critical moments. And they’re starting to see the value; how video can amplify the productivity and impact of their employees. Another way to consider the benefits of visual communication is to consider the following: 64% of communication is non-verbalOne third of the human cortex is dedicated to vision 1 Kandola, Pearn “The Psychology of Effective Business Communications in Geographically Dispersed Teams”, Cisco Systems, September 20062 Vision Group Research, FMRIB, University of Oxford, UK
Cisco TelePresence puts people in the center of collaboration delivering an immersive and natural in-person experienceCisco TelePresence is also enabling and building communities that can share in-person experiences with co-workers, customers and suppliers inside and outside of their organization network.The Power of In-Person is changing the way our customers do business. What started as a way to reduce travel costs, be greener and improve employee productivity quickly evolved into much more. We are seeing our customers embrace Telepresence and adapt it to their unique business needs. We have seen customers use Telepresence to aggregate and amplify their internal experts. We have seen customers accelerate their ability to bring new products and services to market with higher success rates. Finally, our customers are re-defining the very way that they engage with their customers, such as delivering medical advice from a specialist to the bedside of a patient who is 1,000 miles away. Or enabling customers to access financial experts and design consultants in situations where normally those experts would not be available to them, and finally, unifying their supply chain.
Cisco is uniquely positioned to drive the next generation of video in the entire enterprise with Telepresence. Cisco delivers…The best user experienceThe most integrated collaboration portfolio and a comprehensive architectural approach that brings Telepresence together with our broader collaboration portfolio and the network in a way that best enables you to scale your Telepresence deploymentsA more comprehensive “video content” portfolio, encompassing not only recording and streaming but also in-video search, post-production capabilities, enterprise video-sharing portals, and solutions such as digital signs Video content enables human interaction at scale that multiplies the value of Cisco TelePresence. Transition: Let’s begin by introducing the key aspects of a Cisco TelePresence in-person experience
Telepresence can deliver an ‘in-person’ experience that will transform the way you do business through improved collaboration and efficiency including reduced travel – and much more:Reduced travel costsSpending less on travel gives you more on opportunities for growthBe greener – reduce CO2 emissions and further corporate responsibility goalsExample: Global financial institution HSBC a recognized a $604K savings in a single month of travel avoidance using Telepresence for more frequent collaboration Optimized employee time and productivityMinimize business travel-related downtime Enhance teleworking capabilitiesIncrease productivity Improve work/life balanceExample: Volkswagen uses Cisco TelePresence to train more than 200 dealerships on the latest repair techniques, eliminating the costs and lost revenue of sending local technicians to training. This helped cut repair times by 50% and travel and communication expenses by 30%, resulting in a 300% improvement in complex repair turn time--and customer satisfaction.Faster decision making Accelerate business-critical decision making Accelerate sales cycles Reduce time to market Create new forums for collaborationBuild competitive differentiationExample: Statoil, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, connects platforms in the Norwegian Sea with support centers on the coast. TelePresence helps shore-based experts diagnose problems immediately from thousands of miles away, significantly reducing downtime. Some issues that previously needed two months to resolve now take two weeks. Transformed business models… Scale expertise across the globe Redefine customer-service modelsUnify your entire supply chain Transform every corner of your business and industryExample: Specialists on Call uses Cisco TelePresence to connect stroke victims with emergency-trained neurologists within minutes of entering a hospital to help ensure appropriate and timely treatment. Success rates are 3x higher than the national average. Transition: And these results are growing across organizations to empower supply chains and communities.
The first phase of Telepresence was focused on delivering a transformational experience. But it was limited to a small percentage of employees at mostly larger organizations, which made it difficult for someone who had Telepresence to share an in-person experience with whoever they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. As we look forward, the next phase is focused on building a community of people who can easily share in-person experiences with others inside and outside of their companies. All employees will be able to participate in a Telepresence meeting as well as invite customers and suppliers to participate. We believe the creation of this community of shared, in-person experiences is the key driver of growth and that Cisco is best positioned to accelerate this transition. We see this in three areas:Driving Telepresence from the boardroom to the desktop and beyond -- deeper deployments within the organization result in expanded return in business valueExtending the experience to companies of all sizesExpanding Telepresence beyond meetings to more use cases Transition Cisco is enabling this transition with a broad portfolio of endpoints and infrastructure.
The Cisco TelePresence experience extends from the boardroom to the desktop. Cisco has the market’s broadest Telepresence endpoint and infrastructure portfolio ranging from total immersive experiences with the CTS 3000 units, to multipurpose room solutions that turn any conference room into a Telepresence room. Our newest integrated systems in this category are designed to be easy to install in minutes from out of the box to making the first call. Making our products both simple to use and simple to install and manage is a key requirement for how we can support more pervasive use of Telepresence and simplify deployment of the technology. Our EX60 and EX90 products further extend TelePresence to the personal desktop. These endpoint choices reflect the desire of our customers to be able to use Telepresence from the comfort of their office in addition to going to a Telepresence room. Transition: In addition to our Telepresence endpoints, Cisco can extend the experience beyond the desktop…
In addition to endpoints, Cisco enables a range of Cisco video-enabled devices like the Cius, IP video phones, and WebEx clients to participate in a Telepresence meeting. With these, we have a community of almost 25 million monthly users today who are able to participate in a Telepresence meeting. And as a leader in driving standards, we are able to include any standards-based endpoints. Of course, we’d love it if everyone was using all Cisco devices, all the time, but we understand that isn’t always the case. What’s best for our customers is to support all standards-based endpoints, not just our own.We ultimately believe that pervasive deployments of video communications will include a mix of immersive, multipurpose, and personal Telepresence endpoints as well as video-enabled hardware and software clients. Transition: In total, Cisco has one of the broadest portfolios of endpoints to enable in-person experience.
Here is a quick view to how Cisco delivers seamless, in-person Telepresence experiences across the organization and beyond. The flexibility of the portfolio supports a combined set of products and solutions to create the kinds of experiences and environments appropriate to the wide variety of business needs.These are unified experiences --- applying all the end-user experience of the Telepresence infrastructure to the entire endpoint line: One button to pushAuto collaboration toolsMultipointInteroperability across products, vendors, and the industrySecure and scalable intercompany communications Transition: Equipping organizations with in-person experiences also includes the ability to deliver solution to suit all types of businesses and to serve ecosystems of users
The next key to building a community that can share in-person experiences is extending the Telepresence experience to companies of all sizes. Businesses don’t exist on islands, but are part of a complex ecosystem of partners, customers, and suppliers. Some of those companies are larger and some are smaller, but they all benefit from getting closer to their colleagues, customers, and suppliers. In the past this was a challenge. Moving forward we have three deployment models to provide choice and to accelerate growth of the entire category. First is on-premises. This is an attractive option for larger organizations that require a higher level of control, integration and scalability. Second is our unique ability to partner with many of the world’s leading global service providers and enable them to deliver their own hosted solutions. We now have 14 service providers delivering hosted Cisco TelePresence services across the globe. Finally, we believe it’s critical that we expand our Cisco CloudCollaboration Services strategy to deliver our own hosted Telepresence services via partners to mid-sized and smaller businesses via Cisco TelePresence Callway. This lets us shift from an Opex to a Capex model that is more attractive to smaller businesses, while shouldering a large part of the ongoing IT management for them. Together, these three deployment models will help drive the development of the Telepresence community by extending the experience to a wider range of organizations, providing more choices and creating greater growth opportunities for our partners. Transition: The ability to reach new customer audiences with targeted offers drives value for all users ..
Mid-sized and smaller businesses are looking for an in-person experience to improve their own business or get closer to key customers and suppliers. Cisco now offers a focused set of endpoints that are attractive to smaller businesses, from the value-priced MX room-based systems, to personal endpoints in the EX and E series, down to Cisco Jabber for TelePresence for highly mobile employees. You can deploy these endpoints through a hosted infrastructure service called Cisco TelePresence Callway, a new Cisco Cloud Collaboration offering. Using an existing broadband connection, Callway connects endpoints for a reasonable annual subscription fee. Over time, being part of the Cisco Collaboration Cloud will help us more tightly integrate solutions to meet your unique needs and those of your calling communities. Key Callway benefits:Easy to activate and start using endpointsCall any standards-based video systemUnlimited calling and data sharingMulti-party options available – up to 12 in a meeting at once (sold separately) This all means that you can enjoy an authentic Cisco TelePresence experience at an ROI that makes sense for mid-sized and smaller businesses. And your organization grows, we can grow with you -- you can add new endpoints and service subscriptions at any time, and you can use your existing endpoints if you eventually want move to an on-premises solution. Transition: This cloud-based option for midsized business is the latest addition to the portfolio and complements the expansive infrastructure solutions.
Cisco’s overarching objective is to create a unified user experience across the product line – we want to deliver the highest quality and most consistent experience to all users. We want to ensure that IT administrators can leverage existing investments in network and unified communication solutions when driving deeper deployments of Telepresence both within and across organizations as well as in the extension of their Telepresence investment to include rich-media experiences. This will drive increased technology adoption and a stronger ROI. To deliver on this, organizations need a Unified Collaboration Infrastructure, which enables end users to easily connect and collaborate regardless of their device or deployment model. This infrastructure and architectural approach is supported by a solid network foundation and includes several key components – call control, conferencing, management, and media services.
Unified conferencing enables a meeting experience and lets users decide how they would like to participate. Unified conferencing delivers simplification and choice: Conferences available to anyone, anywhere. It optimizes the user experience and enables the same experience across all endpoints.It allows the adoption of a common feature set across the product line – features line OBTP. It allows end users to easily participate in ad hoc, rendezvous, and scheduled meetings. For the administrator, unified conferencing means scale, simplicity, and reliability – a smarter and more effective use of bandwidth and resource allocation. It is also the ability to easily expand your existing footprint by integrating your on-premises infrastructure with cloud-based Telepresence solutions. Simplified and scalable conferencing includes: Options for media distribution for both transcoding and switching choices in our portfolio, including the Cisco TelePresence Multipoint Switch and new Cisco TelePresence ConductorOptions for media services including any-to-any interoperability and network-based media services including transcoding, transcription, transrating, and video analytics extend to our video content solutions as well. Cloud-conferencing solution options that enable greater flexibility for on-premises deployments if you’re seeking hosted infrastructure options or want to incorporate other cloud-based options like Cisco TelePresence WebEx OneTouch. Transition: Unified conferencing and media services is supported by solution management
Cisco end-to-end management solutions enable real-time control, visualization, and troubleshooting. This comprehensive approach over the network provides you with the tools for meeting management and control to simplify deployments broadly across the organization. Unified Management meansPeople meet, not devices! We want to enable users to invite a person to a meeting, not their device.Simplification of how to find/contact someone – whether ad hoc or scheduled.Cross-pollination as directories and scheduling are tied to all devices.Simplified management for administrators plus resource allocation and enhanced reporting capabilities to show quicker ROI. This includes scheduling, network and element management, and reporting capabilities Transition: You can further extend the value of a comprehensive deployment of Telepresence endpoints and infrastructure with enterprise video content…
Enterprise Video Content solutions deliver even more business value from Telepresence. Competitive advantage is shifting toward the interaction of ideas from people. It’s moving away from processes, away from supply-chain optimization, and away from documents. It’s all about capture, transform, and share. Video content solutions enable people to capture this interaction and knowledge easily, then transform it to be consumed and shared no matter where people are, or what device they’re using. Cisco has an end-to-end video content solution that can use Telepresence endpoints and other collaboration technologies like WebEx to capture knowledge and information. TRANSITION: But it’s not enough simply to press “record.” You need an easy-to-use end-to-end workflow to be able to really take advantage of this knowledge and information.
The “Transform” portion of Cisco’s Enterprise Video Content is a significant area of innovation. It’s here that video formats of all types are transcoded and transrated – or to put it simply, “adapted,” to any device or sharing mechanism. Your users don’t have to understand different video formats nor care what kind of endpoint they’re using to record. Cisco Media Experience Engines perform this adaptation and apply simple post-production measures, such as minor editing, graphical overlays, watermarks, bumpers, and trailers, to give videos a professional look that’s consistent with your company’s branding. It also contains Pulse Video Analytics, which is the ability to recognize spoken keywords and different speakers, making video easy to scan, browse, and search. This capability is especially important for long videos, as it helps viewers get to the specific parts that are relevant to them. All of these are underscored by Medianet, Cisco’s name for an intelligent network that’s aware of the devices on it and what kind of traffic is running. This simplifies provisioning just the amount of network infrastructure needed, helps troubleshoot automatically, and makes it much easier to deploy a video-enabled strategy. Transition: A Medianet continues to flow to the Share portion of enterprise video content.
Sharing encompasses all the various ways in which you can share video. For larger networks, a video content delivery system is critical to managing traffic loads and optimizing performance. And Cisco has multiple innovative – and integrated – ways to share video, from Show and Share, an enterprise video sharing and webcasting portal, to Digital Signage and Cisco Cast. Transition: Adding video content to Telepresence deployments substantially opens up new use cases for video.
Adding elements of video content can help your organization experience transformative gains. Recording and streaming can create efficient, effective ways to scale training and education. Video analytics can mitigate “data deluge” problem by making videos easier to find by spoken content, and easier to look within video for relevant information. Video content sharing opens up new use cases such as virtual events or even dynamic, interactive advertising. And so on. It’s a revolutionary impact with an incremental investment.
The Cisco TelePresence and Video Content portfolio provides the most comprehensive set of solutions to enable business process transformation and expand collaboration capabilities.
Cisco’s broad collaboration portfolio will make this possible. The broadest and most diverse portfolio in the industry, the elements are really focused on technology functions. We have breadth and depth of applications in each area, plus flexibility in deployment to match your needs: on premises, in the cloud, and/or in a client or virtualized environment. Cisco brings together the elements required to offer a true “full-suite” approach, which is the direction most leading industry analysts today are advising clients to take when making a collaboration purchasing decision. Collaboration in the enterprise maps to this portfolio. You probably know Cisco for our communications strength. We pioneered Unified Communications, which incorporates IP telephony, messaging, plus elements of video, presence, and instant messaging. It’s where we started our efforts in improving collaboration. We rose very quickly to become the market-share leader in IP telephony and a driving force of innovation in that space. Today we are the market leader with a wide range of endpoints and applications. Collaboration Applications bring control and management to IT, while creating a better experience for users of smartphones and mobile devices. You can experience this with our Jabber client, WebEx conferencing, or our social solution Quad. Customer Collaboration is essentially an expanded and more-evolved view of traditional contact center solutions, where we are innovating by bringing social-networking capabilities into customer service. Just as we did with voice, we are innovating with video to create the most lifelike and intuitive video conferencing on the marketwith our Telepresence solutions.
So, as we look at the four main areas of applications focus, you see that our approach…Continues to build from our industry leadership in unified communications to build solutions that work better together seamlessly to provide an enhanced user experienceAllows for the “any device” enterprise reality, by working with the broadest range of devices, platforms, and browsers -- as well as continuing to offer our own enterprise-optimized devices such as IP phones and the CiusContinues to offer multiple deployment options that map to business needs as well as secure, scalable solutions that adhere to industry standardsOffers solutions that provide faster ROI through savings on operations, gains in productivity or strategic advantage through business transformation Collaboration that is mobile, social, visual and virtual within and among the enterprise landscape requires a purpose-built network architecture to accommodate today’s business needs. Too much is at stake in today’s enterprise to even consider building from an “endpoint-back-in” perspective.
Cisco’s Collaboration Applications portfolio consists of three pillars:1. WebEx, for web conferencing2. Jabber, for unified communications3. Cisco Quad, for social collaboration.The portfolio is unique because of its breadth… literally, the number of capabilities we can deliver to customers through all of these applications… from conferencing to mobile voice and video, to social… it’s a very broad feature set. The applications extend from real-time to non-real-time collaboration, as well as 1:1, and many:many… and everything in between. This is important because collaboration knows no boundaries. There are dozens of use cases that apply, and no one size can or will fit all scenarios.Lastly, they are all built on a common infrastructure that is built from-the-start with collaboration needs in mind.
The relevance of providing breadth of capabilities and working across a wide range of devices, platforms and browsers is that it addresses the needs and preferences of the evolving workforce.You can deliver a true anytime, anyplace experience where users are not relegated to a second-class, voice-only experience or constrained by the tools they’re forced to use. Instead, they are free to use the capabilities and devices that truly meet their needs and preferences. And their needs are usually defined by their roles at any given time, which can and do change. Most knowledge workers play a number of different roles within a given day: project manager, customer, mobile worker, trainee, etc. By providing complete communications capabilities across a broader range of platforms and devices, Cisco can address a broader range of the user types.For instance, in a project manager role we need access to a different toolset than in our mentor role. Telepresence makes more sense in a 1:1 mentor interaction than for team dynamics, where a WebEx virtual meeting may be more appropriate.“Information workers” who sit at a desk“Executive workers” who are not PC driven are more likely to use mobile communications tools and more actively seek out video (desktop and room systems) solutions “Deskless workers” who do not use a PC today“Mobile workers” who are not information producers (laptop would be overkill)Cisco addresses a broader range of work locationsOffice buildings, Branch locationsTeleworkers, business travelersKiosksRetail – tablet toting employees Hospital – Many forms of mobile employees who need access to information, people, communicationsAnd just about any location in between
By offering our solutions on a broad array of mobile devices, we support use cases that extend across verticals and meet the needs and requirements of the evolving workforce. We offer a world-class user experience in three ways: mobile, social, and visual. Mobile: Cisco not only offers a great mobile experience with lots of capabilities, but offers an experience optimized for mobile devices – whatever those devices happen to be. Microsoft may be able to check the box on a couple devices, but both their capabilities and the range of supported devices are much more limited. Mobile WebEx meetings deliver the highest-quality conferencing experience optimized for smartphones and tablets. WebEx Meeting clients for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android, and Cius offer a unique collaboration experience that allows users to schedule, start, and attend WebEx meetings; view shared content; view participant lists; chat with other participants; and much more. iPad and Android devices support voice over IP. The iPad 2.0 supports high-quality, two-way multipoint video. WebEx recently hit a significant milestone of 1+ million mobile app downloads and also has 1+ million mobile attendees per month. Since its inception, Cisco has been recognized with several industry awards. Fortune recently named the WebEx Mobile App as the #2 top business app. Cisco Collaboration Applications are designed so you can securely take your communications tools with you, whether down the hall, across campus, or on the road. Mobility solutions can help your organization benefit from business agility and productivity, with greater security and manageability. Mobility capabilities let you:Connect your office phone and mobile device to a single contact number with “Single Number Reach,” allowing contacts to reach you without having to make multiple calls. Seamlessly transfer calls between devices, during calls.Turn your smartphone into a full-featured Cisco Unified IP Phone via a softphone application that lets you place, receive, and manage calls over Wi-Fi networks, providing cost savings when mobile minutes are limited and expensive.Access presence and IM capabilities that let you view colleague availability and update your own. Visual voicemail that lets you see the caller’s details and play back on your mobile phone.
Social software isn’t just for reporting last night’s dinner menu or the antics of your dog anymore. It’s making significant inroads in the enterprise. The text and document-centric focus in enterprises is quickly giving way to a more social people-centered paradigm. Cisco offers an out-of-box experience that is inherently social with a user experience like that in the consumer world. You get things like profiles, which allow employees to be more productive by knowing who they’re interacting with. Other productivity-enhancing social features in our products make work more transparent, and easier to do. Things like communities, activity streams that show what’s happening in your communities of interest; user updates that show when people in your professional network are uploading documents, changing their status, joining communities… An excellent example of how this works is with on-boarding a new employee. A staff member can get to know peers much more quickly by visiting their profiles, seeing to whom they’re connected, to which communities they belong, and what they post in their status feeds or their personal blogs. In short, social enterprise software can provide context, which translates into new levels of interaction, collaboration, and productivity. It provides personalization, information sharing, and a new way of working. And it’s setting new standards.
There’s been an explosion in video usage and devices. Cisco offers the best visual experience because we give it first-class treatment and consider it a natural part of good collaboration, including it in all our Collaboration Applications portfolio offerings. We have desktop and mobile video; standards-based video; and the ability to view, share, and search in our social software. We see video as having two facets: as real-time communication and as content. Real-time video must be the highest possible quality – otherwise it becomes more distracting than valuable: Jabber’s built-in high-definition video is based on industry standards for interoperability with all standards-based video sources, whether from Cisco or third parties. WebEx has a high-definition video experience and the option to view content and video pervasively throughout a meeting on desktops, mobile devices, or with an integrated Telepresence experience.Look no further than YouTube for an example and use case of video as content. Shareable and viewable on demand, asynchronous video lets people search video of a past meeting, a learning session, and okay, maybe a dancing cat. You can also capture real-time video and store it to make it accessible as content after the live session. Cisco’s goal is to make video as versatile and searchable as text and documents are today. We see video as a resource and treat it accordingly in our user experience, making it an inherent part of our applications, seamless and integrated across the portfolio.WebEx Video features:Currently support high-definition video at 720p resolution. Automatically assess each participant’s available bandwidth and computer capabilities and delivers the highest quality possible for each individual.Include active speaker-switching in the participant list and the ability to see up to 7 simultaneous multipoint video streams Support iPad 2.0’s two-way video. Include integration with Cisco TelePresence WebEx OneTouch Jabber Video:Supports a rich experience with high-definition 720p resolution Meets the H.264 industry standard for interoperability, allowing you to connect directly to industry-standard audio and video endpoints, including Cisco TelePresence and 3rd-party solutions without an expensive gateway. Gartner says by 2015, more than 80% of Telepresence meetings will include participants using personal video.
Cisco not only delivers outstanding user experience, but we also deliver from an IT perspective. The anytime, anywhere workplace is only possible if IT can securely enable it… it has to be scalable, deployable, and work in the current environment. Cisco allows IT administrators to incorporate this new level of collaboration realistically. We have rules-based policy management and scalability, even for social software across hundreds of thousands of users. And it all integrates with existing investments. For instance, Quad integrates seamlessly with Sharepoint, Documentum, and third-party applications like Microsoft Office. Secure, Scalable, ReliableFor WebEx conferencing, security and IT control are always of the utmost concern when purchasing a cloud-based solution. All WebEx services are delivered securely through the Cisco Collaboration Cloud, a private, scalable, high-performance network with carrier-class architecture. This infrastructure delivers real-time voice, video, and data services through data centers that are strategically placed near major Internet access points. Dedicated, high-bandwidth fiber routes traffic around the globe. The Cisco Collaboration Cloud is a highly available and secure service-delivery platform with unmatched performance, integration flexibility, and enterprise-grade security -- unburdened by the physical limitations of on-premises solutions. The WebEx Site Administration module provides enterprise-grade IT policy and controls, which manage and enforce security policies and controls for each WebEx site. Administrators can configure the service for compliance with corporate guidelines, including making all meetings private or disabling/enabling specific conferencing features. Settings controlled at this level address Host and Presenter privileges for scheduling meetings. For example, you may disable a Presenter’s ability to share apps or transfer files on a per-site or a per-user basis by customizing session configurations. The module manages many extensive security and policy features ranging from account management, user account actions, etc. WebEx also supports federated authentication for user Single Sign-On (SSO) to enable seamless use with other business applications. Cisco enhances WebEx conferencing experiences with flexible integration with a variety of Cisco and third-party platforms and services to provide enhanced collaboration capabilities and reduced costs. This includes video and TelePresence, third-party audio, on-premises network devices, and mobile devices. Jabber: Deployed with the market-leading Cisco Unified Communications Manager call control solution means you get clear, reliable, and high-quality communications. The consumer experience is influencing employee behavior; they now expect anywhere, anytime access. This expectation creates new demands on IT for connectivity and security. For instance, personal applications on business devices can expose the corporate network to unwanted traffic and risks. Secure connectivity features built into Cisco Jabber secure the connection for Jabber application traffic to the enterprise, without affecting other applications or communications (e.g. Facebook). AnyConnect secures the entire device, allowing users to have enterprise applications on personal devices, giving them the flexibility they want with the security your enterprise needs. Flexible Deployment Options As I mentioned earlier, one of Cisco’s strategic pillars for collaboration is to enable flexible deployment and consumption modelsfor our customers.We made our first release of Quad (2.0) available on a limited basis to enterprise organizations with 10,000+ users via a premises-based deployment on our V-Block infrastructure. In November, we launched Quad 2.1, extending availability to organizations with 2,500 -10,000 users on our UCS C-Series Platform.Now, with a new hosted model, Quad is available to organizations with more than 1000 users. As with any hosted collaboration solution, this is well-suited if you don’t want to deploy or manage Quad within your own environment, and/or are looking for faster deployment time. Cisco supports a combined on-premises and on-demand deployment for web and audio conferencing. Cisco Unified MeetingPlace on-premises audio conferencing is integrated with WebEx conferencing. The solutions are tightly integrated so users have a single point of setup, attendance, and meeting control. The WebEx Node for MCS and the WebEx Node for ASR are on-premises WebEx options that extend the Cisco Collaboration Cloud into your own on-site network infrastructure.Cisco Jabber provides deployment flexibility -- with on-premises or cloud-based UC services. The experience is consistent across platforms, devices, and deployment alternatives so you can choose your preferred options without sacrificing user capabilities.
WebEx, Jabber, and Quad are not standalone, siloed applications. Your investments in one transfer and integrate with the others. Combining these solutions in a truly integrated and seamless experience provides an overall superior experience for users. The capabilities work across all the solutions, and your investments are protected. For exampleIf you’re in your Jabber client, you can instantly launch a WebEx meeting. You can engage in an IM session with someone who’s logged into Jabber while you’re in Quad. You can click to start a phone call from Jabber or Quad. As Cisco’s roadmap evolves, so will product interoperability, creating an even richer user experience. Innovation will increase functionality, not only with Cisco products, but with third-party endpoints.
High Quality Video for Cisco WebEx enhances collaboration with more engaging and productive meetings through the best possible video experience for every user.WebEx High Quality video has received overwhelming positive feedback from customers: “Stunning”, “Love it”, “Awesome”… Users can meet online just as if they are face-to-face with video resolution up to 360p (640x360) pixel resolution up to 30 frames per second Several new features set WebEx apart from competitors, including:Full screen video to turn a web conference into a virtual video conference room.Integration with Telepresence via Cisco TelePresence WebEx OneTouch HQ Apple iPad and Cius: With the iPad 2.0 release, WebEx now supports two-way video with high quality video; the Cius will be supported in the second half of 2012. Active Presence speaker-switching technology uses voice activation to automatically switch the main video to the current speaker. WebEx High Quality video is available on all WebEx-supported languages as part of the WebEx Business Suite 27, Feature Release 17.
The Cisco Collaboration Cloud offers flexible integration with a variety of Cisco products as well third-party platforms and services to provide enhanced collaboration capabilities and reduced costs with WebEx – including Telepresence, third party audio, on-premises and mobile network devices, and network infrastructure such as the Cisco ASR. Cisco integrates the Telepresence experience with WebEx Meeting Center with Cisco TelePresence WebEx OneTouch. Currently generally available, it features:“One button to push” launch from Cisco TelePresence roomTwo-way data sharing for WebEx and Cisco TelePresence attendeesIntegrated audio and unified participants listsTelePresence video in a WebEx Meeting Center meetingWebEx Meeting Center High-Quality Video Cisco Jabber integrates with WebEx to instantly escalate a IM conversation into a WebEx meeting at anytime or simply do a desktop share. Why do you need this integration? Imagine you’re running late for a meeting and come into your office. Your laptop needs some time to boot up, but your IP phone display shows you a meeting is about to begin. With a single click you can join the audio portion of the meeting. When your PC finally boots up, the productivity tools bring up the web and data portion of the meeting and automatically start on your computer. As an integral component of the Cisco Unified Communications solution, Cisco Unified MeetingPlace lets you incorporate multiparty discussions and application sharing into a broad range of communication scenarios. Cisco Unified MeetingPlace is also integrated with Cisco WebEx Web conferencing and the WebEx Node for MCS, allowing you to combine the cost-saving advantages of on-premises audio conferencing with the productivity benefits of Cisco WebEx. The Cisco WebEx Node is a shared port adapter (SPA) for the Cisco ASR 1000 Series that provides enhanced performance and reduced bandwidth consumption for enterprise-scale WebEx web, VoIP, and video sessions by extending the hosted Cisco Collaboration Cloud into a large enterprise. Critical software components of the WebEx platform are deployed to an embedded processor within the onsite router. WebEx offers also offers APIs to for third-party audio providers to integrate their audio solutions. Lastly, Medianet gives network and application administrators unparalleled visibility into their environments for any media, including WebEx traffic. Medianet capabilities for WebEx include video traffic simulation through IP SLA VO, providing administrators with tools for better network planning, faster issue resolution, higher service quality, and greater bandwidth efficiency. Video traffic simulation enables administrators to understand the potential impact of traffic on a particular site prior to deployment. Medianet simulates WebEx video traffic on the network so that IT can more precisely model bandwidth utilization and identify, for example, whether a particular site can adequately support high-quality or high-definition video.
Cisco Quad is a next-generation enterprise collaboration platform based on four fundamental principles, which revolve around People and their relationshipsContent creation and sharing Communities that support each other while sharing expertiseCollaboration contextually integrated within business activitiesThese principles guide Cisco’s design and delivery of technology capabilities that when coupled with change-management practices, help organizations create a new socially driven enterprise. And do it while satisfying security and compliance needs. Quad uses a unified platform architecture to support convergence trends affecting collaboration, content management, social software, and unified communications in the enterprise environment. Quad also includes pre-built integrations with a wide array of Cisco products, as well as integration with third-party applications from Microsoft, Oracle, and others. Your organization can create custom integrations with your own business systems using open standards and APIs. Cisco Quad offers a new, virtual place where teams and individuals go to collaborate. It brings together content, business applications, communications, and enterprise social software into a single, intuitive experience. People can easily find information and expertise, act on it, and form teams to work together for accelerated results.
Personalized, integrated experienceProfile: Present yourself to the rest of the organization by defining your interests, expertise and moreSocial Graph: Leverage your network of colleagues, mentors, subject-matter experts and other co-workersActivity Streams: Single view of what’s going on in your social graphWatch List: A way to filter and view the activities most relevant to youApplications: Add gadgets to your dashboard for calendaring, suggestions and moreKnowledge Sharing Made EasyUnified Post: A single way to create content driven by the way you want to share (view, comment, edit) not by guessing on what tool to use (blog, wiki, etc)Video: Upload pre-recorded videos to deliver a rich media experience Unified Communications: Communications is core to effective collaboration, Quad treats voice, video, instant messaging, presence, and web conferencing as first-class capabilitiesCollaborate Cross FunctionallyCommunities: Create public, restricted, or private communities to share best practices and exchange ideasSearch for People, Information, & Communities Semantic Search: Quad leverages semantics technology to improve your search experience and allows you to filter search results in a variety of ways (by time, by people, by community, by content type)MobilityQuad is available across all popular devices from smart phones to tablets (iPhone, iPad, Cius)Cisco QuadAccelerates Team PerformanceAllows you to apply governance and manage complianceEnables rich, real-time interactionsMaximizes existing technology investments
We designed Quad from the start to empower and engage people, and the enhancements we’re making in 2.5 build on that. We’re integrating activity streams and watch lists into a common framework, and enabling people to apply custom filters on the content or people they follow (watch list) or the activities within their professional networks (activity stream). With microblogs, Quad now supports file attachments and multimedia, allowing people to go well beyond publishing simple status updates. Imagine, for example, being able to ask your entire community for the latest presentations or relevant videos. The fact that people can now respond by attaching these files will make for an incredibly valuable use case that drives adoption. One of Quad’s most unique features is the unified content model. With “posts,” users have a single model for creating, publishing, editing, and sharing content within Quad. Instead of having to figure out which tool to use for content sharing (blog, wiki, forum, e-mail, etc.), everything can be done in Quad. The 2.5 release includes significant updates to post framework including: content previews within email notifications, the pre-set ability to share with direct reports, and a metadata panel designed to provide a much deeper level of context around individual posts. Release 2.5 also introduces the ability for administrators to create custom community templates to suit the most common needs of their business, since different communities have different goals, processes, and thus different needs. For example, a sales community template designed to focus on a new opportunity might automatically be set up as restricted, come with pre-built hooks into CRM, and pull in RSS feeds from outside about competitors and about the potential customer. Meanwhile, a product launch team’s community might contain a very different set of capabilities. Also new are recommendations. When people log into their dashboards, Quad uses data based on their own activity in the system to offer suggestions of people they might consider following, relevant communities to join, or new information/posts that may be of interest to them.
We’re also excited about the integrations we’re driving with industry leading content mgmt platforms: EMC Documentum and Microsoft SharePoint 2007 These integrations will extend core content management capabilities to Quad and, at the same time, will make content more social & actionable by making it more visible to the people who are allowed to see it. So, for example, on their own, Documentum and SharePoint 2007 are content repositories. But when you have your own personal window into Documentum or SP in your Quad workspace, you’ll be able to see people’s presence, roll over their names (i.e., the guy who just made edits to a document), and click to collaborate with them right then and there. You can’t do that in the native applications on their own….so it becomes more valuable through its integration with Quad. Conversely, when people go and do something in Documentum, those actions appear as activities within the Quad activity streams (i.e., “Jim just updated the document”) which makes the content more visible to the people who are allowed to see it, makes it more actionable, faster, etc…maximizing the power and reach of the content rather than keeping it stored somewhere for people to try and find it. A vast majority of customers we talk to have also deployed SharePoint 2007 at a functional level, rather than Enterprise-wide. We call it “SharePoint crabgrass”…by layering Quad as an enterprise-wide platform on top of the SharePoint crabgrass, we’re making content stored in those functional repositories more searchable and accessible across the entire organization…in effect, we’re letting organizations “Share as they are”, and eliminating the need for them to do highly complex and expensive upgrades to SharePoint 2010.
Other collaboration and enterprise software platforms integrate UC as an after-thought. With Cisco Quad, we’ve designed unified communications into the core of our enterprise collaboration platform – we treat UC tools as a first-order capability, it’s not an after-thought. Presence, VoIP, IM, and conferencing are available throughout the platform. Plus, we preserve existing investments by integrating with popular market solutions from Microsoft and IBM. Hover Card: Easily connect to others via IM, web conferencing, or voice by hovering over someone’s name
Quad’s features are also very focused on the needs of the mobile workforce. Any avid Facebook user will attest to the fact that they use the mobile version as much, if not more, than they do on their PCs. So, in addition to the existing versions of Quad for the iPad and iPhone, our new Quad app is available for the Android-based Cisco Cius. With the mobile versions of Quad, people can:Update their status to keep colleagues informedUse activity streams to know what others in their network are doing Read full posts and actively participate in discussionsFind experts and information using enterprise search and rich user profile information
Many organizations in regulated industries or those with intellectual property and other policy-enforcement concerns often worry that open collaboration and information sharing can create risk. Cisco helps mitigate those concerns through Cisco Enterprise Policy Manager, a built-in integrated policy management capability. Role Based Access Control lets you define custom roles and identify which role can perform which action.Quad also implements the concept of Policy Inheritance. For example, if you create a restricted community, everything in that community will be limited. For example, pages inherit permissions from communities, and portlets inherit from pages. There’s no need to set policy controls on individual objects within a community.
Along with new usability features and flexible access options, Cisco offers services that help ensure successful deployments, offering deep experience in planning, design, implementation and ongoing support. Enterprise social software deployments are technology deployments, but they have a unique impact on people, processes, and business culture. For that reason, we offer Cisco Collaboration Change Management Services to support user adoption and help you realize full business value of your investment. We’ve identified the challenges of user adoption from working with customers as well as from our own internal deployments. One of the things that sets us apart is the fact that we’re our own biggest customer. Cisco’s experience with Quad deployment has fostered a terrific partnership between IT, Cisco Services, and the Quad business unit -- with everyone actively participating in the development and roadmap of the product.Our Collaboration Change Management Service helps drive successful end-user adoption for Quad and are based on combined elements of two change-management methodologies (Prosci/ADKAR and John Kotter “Leading Change” ) and Cisco Leading Practices gathered from internal and customer deployments of other collaboration technologies. **Additional resources for spokespersons**External: Services white paper for Enterprise Social Software that supports the new services: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/services/ps2961/ps2664/CiscoServicesSocialMediaWhitePaper.pdf. Internal: Two presentations you might find useful: http://wwwin.cisco.com/CustAdv/services/segments/enterprise/CollaborationSvcs/ Under “Overviews”: 1. Collaboration Change Management Sales Module (PPT) 2. Enabling Collaboration with Enterprise Social Software (PPT – based on the whitepaper)
So, as we look at the four main areas of Cisco Collaboration Applications focus, you’ve seen that Cisco…Continues to build from its industry-leadership in UC to build solutions that work better together seamlessly to provide an enhanced user experience Is expanding from its core UC focus to better enable video and mobility, plus manage the ever-expanding collaboration tools landscape to support flexibility of choice for usersAllows for the “any device” enterprise reality as well as offering enterprise-tuned devices such as the Cius and IP phonesContinues to offer IT organizations flexibility of multiple deployment options that map to business needs as well as secure, scalable solutions that meet industry standardsOffers solutions that provide faster ROI through savings on operations, productivity gains, or strategic advantage gained through business transformation Collaboration that is mobile, social, visual and virtual within and among the enterprise landscape requires a network architecture that is built to accommodate – from the start and not built from an endpoint-back-in perspective – too much is at stake in today’s world.
Let’s take a quick look at Cisco’s collaboration portfolio, comprising four categories focused around established IT functions. Unified Communicationsincludes our IP telephony offerings, back-end infrastructure, plus hard and soft endpoints (voice)Customer Collaborationincludes agent desktop tools, IVR, and software for the core contact center and analytics (contact center)Telepresence includes not just best-in-class synchronous in-person communications but also offerings designed to ease the creation and sharing of video content (video)Collaboration Applicationsinclude three discreet offerings: Cisco WebEx, Cisco Jabber, and Cisco Quad. (desktop software)Customers can deploy these as they desire -- on premises or from the cloud, either through our partners or directly from Cisco. In many cases, they can also be provisioned in a hybrid “best of both worlds” mode. Cisco has market-leading components in each category, but the compelling story is in how they work together. Increasingly, leading industry analysts recommend that their clients take this sort of integrated portfolio approach when making strategic purchasing decisions.Customizing the right solution for each individual customer is where professional services add additional value. Either through Cisco Services or our partners, they can bring best practices to the table that will accelerate your time to value. Transition: I hope you now have a good sense of the breadth and range of the collaboration portfolio. I’d like to turn now to what makes it so cohesive, and that’s our collaboration architecture.
Clearing: Cisco’s collaboration architecture powers and underpins our product portfolio and is our most important differentiator. Collaboration puts people at the center of communication and interaction. It is about breaking down silos among content formats, individual tools and devices, companies, and ultimately people working towards a common goal. This requires a combination of both great software and purpose-built hardware to deliver the experiences that most effectively bring people together. Yet at the same time, we recognize that heterogeneity is a fact –of-life and that interoperability, openness and customer choice are paramount. These principles are actively embraced throughout our the Cisco architecture and approach to collaboration. Cisco’s portfolio of collaboration applications exist to help companies deliver against the top line business imperatives facing today’s enterprise - - such as saving on travel costs, improving employee productivity, increasing customer intimacy and facilitating innovation as they prepare for the upturn. And for IT, the Cisco architecture is enabled through a set of flexible deployment models – whether on premise, Software as a Service or a hybrid of the two – to meet the specific needs of the organization. Transition: Today we are here to explore how SaaS is an Integral part of your collaboration practice. And, we’ll discuss how Cisco is the right choice for today’s business.
Cloud is a broad topic with much discussion in the media and amongst all corners of the business world. As it relates to collaboration in the cloud, here are some of the main themes surfacing from our customers and partners and categorized around their primary areas of interest:Financial BenefitsCloud shifts much of the costs from Capex to Opex Creates consolidated and centralised IT that is more cost effective and frees the internal group to focus more on IT strategy than day-to-day maintenance and upgrade activity. Real value surfaces from UC/Collaboration investment in the “pay for what you use” cloud model Ability to move faster and on a global scaleRapid time to value, or, an ability to capture business value quickly, through rapid and full deployment done by the provider versus the in-house IT group. This can create a compelling ROI across a business, regardless of geographic or operational diversity Business flexibility and agilityEnd-to-end Collaboration Architecture, delivered anywhere, with any content, on any device Customer choice, people centric experience (Post PC era)Consistent & desired user experience (regardless of delivery > cloud, on-premise, hybrid model) Achieving a strategic advantage built upon collaboration.Core vs. context > Preserving capital for core business priorities (vs. supporting infrastructure)Always enabling latest application releases, always providing access to most cutting-edge collaboration tools in the marketThese are the types of areas that we hear today’s business wrestling with as they consider investing in collaboration delivered from the cloud. Ultimately, a consumption model should be based on business drivers and issues and a cloud-delivered solution is often a compelling option. One option to consider is a Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution
Host Collaboration Solutions is a partner-led, cloud offer built on Cisco’s end-to-end collaboration architecture and validated designs. HCS Cisco partners build out their own cloud and collaboration services and offer ‘per user service models’ that continuously improve and have a solution approach for services. They deliver a collaboration experience that can drive business priorities for an enterprise. Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) is composed of four elements: 1) Cisco Unified Communications and Collaboration applications2) An optimized virtualization platform3) A centralized management system for service fulfillment, administration and assurance4) A resilient and scalable architecture for end-to-end SLA enablement. An important aspect of this architecture is that it is a multi-customer architecture vs. multi-tenant. This means there are dedicated applications for customers, multiple applications per blade, shared infrastructure (blades, VM-Ware OS, storage, etc..). Not as cost effective (yet) as a multi-tenant architecture where applications are shared – best of both worlds in dedicated applications for security and customization but shared infrastructure.
This data comes from IBSG demand-side research on cloud computing: interviews in late 2009 with 80 IT execs from 43 enterprises in US, Europe, and Asia, as well as 20 subject matter experts.Cisco works with leading Service Providers to deliver on these key points. HCS enables partners to differentiate and drive value in the Collaboration market, capitalising on their relative position of strengths and customer relationships.
[NOTE: much of this tuned toward HCS benefits for SP – adjust remarks accordingly – business benefit at bottom] Cisco has validated designs and an architectural approach deliver a fully managed ‘Collaboration in the Cloud’ service. This commitment ensures that a business can consolidate and centralise IT support services and drive efficiencies, thereby freeing up IT resources to enable a greater focus on IT strategy. The management system is centered on operational efficiency, from initial implementation and services activation to ongoing provisioning, including moves, adds, and changes. All UC applications can be centrally managed, with a high degree of automation as well as many subscriber services that can be self-service administered. Moreover, the management system includes a service assurance architecture to enable the highest availability and quality of service for the customers on the platform. The architecture allows the ability to mix-and-match management components as well as simplify integration in existing operational support systems, all designed to allow for an ecosystem of tools that best suits the service provider’s needs. Service FulfilmentFast UC Service creation and deliveryIntegrated, automated multi-customer service activation and managementUser friendly self service and centralized management portalsService AssuranceUnified view into service performance and availabilityProactive monitoring and diagnosticsExpedite troubleshooting and resolution of issuesSpeed deployment and capacity planning In summary, Cisco’s approach is to enable: An end-to-end validated management system, designed for cloud services Combined Cisco/Partner toolsets, allowing flexibility for existing customer infrastructureCustomer multi-level self-service capability (automated provisioning, clear service visibility & management control through ‘Customer Portal’ in the Cloud)Reduced implementation (times and risk) For the enterprise, this means access to collaboration services that are secure, reflective of the latest offerings and delivered to scale to the needs of their business. And, HCS can be delivered flexibly to map to the needs of the organization.
With Cisco, today’s businesses have the best of both worlds in terms of delivery in clouds. Cisco enables partners to sell and support a number of flexible methods of consuming ‘Cloud Collaboration’, and at all time ensuring that customers receive consistent and desired user experience, regardless of the choice of delivery, whether that is in the cloud, on-premise or through a hybrid model. This alleviates the need for a business’ IT group to have to manage all of these aspects internally. HCS delivers:Virtualized architecture designed to support collaboration services with no compromise on security, flexibility and application functionality (the benefits of shared hardware, but dedicated customer application instances) An end-to-end validated management system, designed for cloud services Additionally Cisco Partners can augment their service offerings with other Cisco services from clouds including:Cisco WebEx PSTN offersAccess to third party mobility networks and Private Cloud and Managed Service deployment models (‘Carrier grade’ solutions, packaged for the Enterprise) Again, customers benefit financially and operationally.
HCS is not just a solution offer from Cisco It equips the Cisco ecosystem of partners with a range of support across delivery and operations, commercial terms and go to market support
One of the technology innovations that has the potential to create the new virtual workspace is through desktop virtualization. Customers are wanting to move to desktop virtualization to gain the benefits of flexibility, business continuity and data security while reducing total cost of ownership. But there are some fundamental challenges we are hearing from customers because a typical virtual desktop solution does not support high quality user experience especially for voice and voice. It also requires them to work with disparate solutions sets from disparate vendors. And many of the customers are concerned that they may not see the return on investment they’ve expected.
As discussed, business requirements are changing. It is no longer about disparate systems and experiences that are PC centric, phone-centric and video-centric. To meet the new requirements, companies are needing a new virtual workspace. Through virtualization, these capabilities are disaggregated and freed from their traditional form factors. This creates and delivers a new virtual workspace unifying voice, video and virtual desktop any device. This is the catalyst that makes the shift towards people-centric versus device-centric collaboration possible. As it is now possible, it is important to consider whether the market is ready for a shift to a virtualized workspace.
According to Gartner, desktop virtualization is on the rise in the enterprise. The worldwide hosted virtual desktop (HVD) market is expected to reach 70 million units, or 15% of enterprise desktops and laptops by 2014.* But, quality should not be compromised. To further accelerate this rapid market growth, customers need to ensure users receive a rich high-definition experience for voice and video, and an integrated systems approach that reduces the costs and complexity of deployment. So, let’s look at the challenges and opportunities.
Today’s virtual desktop solution is not designed to support rich voice and video in a virtualized desktop environment. Architecturally, desktop virtualization was not built to support peer–to-peer voice and video communications or streaming video or Telepresence sessions. This is because voice and video traffic is embedded in the display protocol, which then flows all the way to the data center and back—commonly known as the hairpin effect. This creates heavy virtual machine processing in the data enter and explosion of bandwidth. The result is an unusable experience. There are some workarounds in the desktop virtualization world for rich media. But, in the long-term users need to look at adopting an architecture that will not require a workaround and are built to scale these capabilities. Ultimately, they should run as or more effectively and efficiently in a virtual desktop environment as they do in the regular desktop environment. What is required?
Cisco’s answer is a new experience is delivered through a new Virtual Workspace that unifies voice video and virtual desktop for an uncompromised user experience. And this experienced is delivered through Cisco VXI. With Cisco VXI, the voice and video traffic is separated from the media flow and voice and video travels point to point, eliminating the hairpin effect. Bandwidth is reduced from megabytes to kilobytes, and dramatically reduces virtual machine processing in data center. And because Cisco VXI is delivering the same Cisco UC solution virtualized in the data center, users get the leading enterprise-grade UC capabilities even when they are using a virtualized desktop. It is important to consider the benefits of the Cisco solution
Cisco VXI delivers the next generation virtual workspace by unifying virtual desktops, voice and video. It provides a flexible, secure, and uncompromised experience for your users and IT organizations through a fully validated end to end solution that offers:- Lower cost of deployment , operation and support Faster, simpler provisioningCustomer choice through an open ecosystem with best-in-class partners Rich media, voice and video collaboration capabilities for a superior end-user experienceDramatically improved data security and compliance through centrally managed applications and dataA portfolio of end point devices and collaboration software that provide better end user experiences, cost savings and power management
With Cisco’s leadership in the data center, network and collaboration, Cisco is uniquely able deliver collaboration in a virtualized word: through virtualizing the app, the delivery and the workspace.
In this module, we’ll take a look at Collaboration Services.
Cisco offers one of the most comprehensive portfolios of collaboration solutions in the industry to help you communicate and collaboration in the “post-PC era”.You can choose from a wide range of “best-in-class” choices, and you can deploy the solutions in any order, at a pace that matches your business objectives. Flexible deployment options offer a variety of choices for hosting on premises, in the cloud, or a with a blend of the two depending on your needs.
Collaboration is more than a technical architecture, solution, or product, it is the transformational experience that integrates people, processes, and technology. Collaboration is the catalyst for evolving from merely using technology to rethinking business, changing process, and adapting culture. As a result, holistic collaboration strategy and architecture must account for—and address—not only the technology, but also the effect those solutions will have on an organization’s processes and culture.
Cisco and our partners offer a broad array of technical and professional services that support customers at every stage of their journey. Our professional services, also known as advanced services, assist customers in transforming their businesses to compete in today’s competitive marketplace. . A full complement of IT and Networking Consulting services help customers with strategic technology and business alignment and cross-architectural planning.. Optimization services help customers meet operational requirements and optimize network performance through performance tuning, process improvement, and knowledge transfer.. Plan, build and run services support new architectures, new technologies and new business solutions. These services provide end to end assistance from detailed readiness, design and migration planning to ongoing performance enhancements.Our technical support services are core to customer success. They speed issue resolution, ensure business continuity, maintain network performance and improve operational efficiency.. Foundational support includes our award-winning SMARTnet Service which gives customers direct access to Cisco TAC engineers, flexible hardware replacement options, up to day operating software, access to Cisco.com knowledge base, plus proactive diagnostics.. High-touch support offers an additional layer of personalized technical support for mission critical environments.. Remote management services offer comprehensive 24 x7 monitoring , while offloading in-house staff.The entire portfolio is underpinned by smart service capabilities. These capabilities provide actionable intelligence gained from secure visibility into the health of a customer’s network. Information is correlated with Cisco’s knowledge base and communicated via diagnostics and alerts to Cisco and partners to provide more proactive and predictive service experiences. Finally, Cisco‘s unique collaborative partner approach combines the strengths of Cisco and our partners to provide you with access to best-in-class networking and IT expertise
Let’s focus in on Cisco’s professional services for Collaboration.Cisco and our partners offer a full range of services that complement your technology investment in collaboration by offering support to you as you plan, build and run your solutions.NOTE to presenter: Review this portfolio slide, then present slides 7 – 12 as appropriate or relevant to your customer.
Collaborative technologies are transforming the way people communicate, innovate, and work together. New business value is being created every day through collaboration, from reduced travel costs and faster decision making to improved employee, partner, and customer relationships.Cultural, behavioral, and process changes are always needed throughout the organization to achieve targeted business goals and desired return on investment (ROI). Studies show that companies are most successful with collaboration technologies when they incorporate a change management plan to help people adopt change and incorporate these technologies into their daily activities.Cisco Collaboration Change Management Services has developed customized processes, tools, and techniques to help people make the adjustments and eliminate the barriers to adopting these new technologies with greater speed and effectiveness. Collaboration Change Management Services brings years of successful customer engagements, proven methodologies, and collaboration expertise to help your organization meet targeted business goals, increase participation, identify and overcome barriers, motivate employees, and deliver ongoing value to the organization.--More detail—Service Features Change management takes a programmatic approach to addressing the wide range of cultural, behavioral, and organizational barriers that often interfere with people’s use of collaboration technologies. CCMS will develop a customized collaboration change management plan that fits your organization’s specific needs and goals via:Collaboration change management methodology proven with large enterprise and public sector customersAssessments and benchmarks to identify your organization’s readiness to adopt collaboration technologiesBusiness process redesign to close the gap between current and future capabilitiesBest practices to assess, promote, and support process and cultural changes, includingo Organizational change readiness assessmentso Leadership engagement best practiceso Business value and ROI assessmento Collaboration network buildingo Resistance management plano Training and coaching planso Communications and marketing best practiceso Reinforcement and rewards program to sustain changesBenefits:Achieve the expected benefits of collaboration more quicklyUnify people around the goals and benefits of the new technologiesAlign changes to achieve targeted benefits and business goalsProactively identify and creatively manage resistance to changeMotivate people to make needed behavior changesHelp people adopt change more quickly and comfortablyAchieve early wins to build momentum and successIntroduce change management practices to help manage future change
Customer Collaboration Solutions help create the foundation for positive customer service, a primary factor in building a stronger business. You want to maximize your customers’ experience, whether by optimizing existing resources or investing in new technology that can help you transform customer care from simple phone transactions to unique, rich collaboration experiences that can be customized to meet the needs of individual customers.Cisco Customer Collaboration Services help you:Develop customer collaboration technology architectures to support your business objectivesEnsuring your preparedness to run what you plan to implementImplementing new contact center solutionsSocial media customer careVideo-enabled customer careMultimedia capture and storageSpeech self-serviceMultichannelCollaboration Agent desktopVirtual contact center routing and reportingProvide the people, processes, and tools needed to operate a contact center in whatever measure required to complement your in-house resources, and Help you continuously improve your existing contact centers.
Cisco Quad is an enterprise collaboration platform designed for today's workforce: social, mobile, visual, and virtual. You may be looking for ways for your organization to connect people to the information and expertise they need, when they need it. Cisco Quad is a new collaborative workspace that's integrated, personalized, and relevant, and frees people to work in a post-PC world.Quad Services are available to help you:Develop a clear strategy and roadmap- Integrate Cisco Quad with your existing processes and functions- Support your Quad implementation- On-going support to drive Cisco Quad throughout your enterprise- Drive Successful adoption (Collaboration Change Management)
You may be looking at TelePresence as a way to allow people to meet, share content, create high-quality video recordings and events, consult with experts, and deliver personalized services in an immersive, face-to-face environment. At the same time, you are balancing your IT staff, want to maximize ROI with wide user adoption, implement without disrupting existing applications and ensure the solutions interoperates with other Cisco and third-party solutions.Services from Cisco and our partners can help you accelerate a successful deployment and deliver a high-quality, reliable, "in-person" Cisco TelePresence experience:- Get comprehensive support throughout your solution planning and deployment, helping you to quickly realize the benefits of this real-time, face-to-face technology.- Get help to run a more reliable, high-quality video communications experience including cost-effective alternatives to self-managed options so you can focus on the business transformational aspects of your solution instead of the technology- Ensure that your Cisco TelePresence system operates at peak performance. TelePresence Optimization Service helps preserve the user experience as adoption increases, maximizes operational efficiency, and boosts business value.
Unified communications (UC) is an increasingly important investment for organizations looking to improve productivity and responsiveness while reducing their IT costs. The convergence of voice, video, and data communications around a shared IP-based infrastructure - allowing users to easily make a call, send a message, or join an audio or video conference - is bringing benefits to businesses of every size, industry, and geography.The key is to build in sufficient flexibility to accommodate new developments as your needs evolve, while extending the value of your existing IT investments, establishing immediate value, and promoting user adoption. You maybe be looking to offer new capabilities to your user base – mobility, video, or new clients and devices, or you maybe be migrating from a traditional PBX to UC. Cisco and our partners can help you with services that:●Avoid expensive, time-consuming, and intrusive redesign through proper planning and design early in the lifecycle●Decrease implementation time by helping ensure that testing goals and processes are clearly defined and based on Cisco best practices●Increasereliability and efficiency with correct implementation based on proper architectural objectives, low-level design, and solution implementation plan●Achieve your Cisco Unified Communications architecture and design goals by taking a structured approach for validation and testing●Increase operational efficiency providing immediate access to vital information, award-winning technical support, including options for remote management.●Provide an optimized, complete systems-level evaluation of your entire Cisco Unified Communications system to understand whether your converged network can support the latest productivity enhancing voice applications.
With Cisco WebExyou can connect employees, partners and customers together with live, interactive audio, data, and video conferencing. Using WebEx, everyone gains the value of participating in live meetings without travel. You can increase productivity with WebEx and make the most of your Cisco investments through integration with Cisco Unified MeetingPlace, Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers, Cisco TelePresence, and the ability to participate in collaborative meetings through a variety of devices.Cisco and our partners offer services targeted at your business objectives. Through consulting, training, production and technology integration, these services not only help you improve the productivity and efficiency of key business processes and events but also accelerate the time it takes to get product and information out to your audiences.In addition to offering traditional “plan, build and run” services, Cisco Services can provide the critical expertise your organization needs to make sure your virtual events are successful. No matter the size of your event — from a virtual meeting room to a complete, immersive virtual conference center — we’ll help you choose the platform that best meets your event needs. Our services team will help you assess network bandwidth requirements, establish a clear project blueprint, help you organize content and delivery options, and create an event that will satisfy your business objectives.
How can we help you on your Collaboration journey? To help you make sure technology, processes, and culture are in sync, Cisco and our partners offer services that will help you derive the full business value from your technology investments:Are you looking to align your technology and business investments and strategy? We confirm that the technology solution aligns with your organization’s business strategy as well as overall IT architecturalstrategy.Example services:Discovery Sessions and Readiness AssessmentsStrategy and Architecture ServicesAre you making a technology transition or adding a new capability? We make sure that other solutions can be added to the architectural framework, and we work with organizations to promote adoption and usage of the new technologies. Example services:Migration to Unified CommunicationsServer and Desktop VirtualizationMicrosoft Integration ServicesBusiness Process Application IntegrationAre you looking for higher ROI on your technology investment? Example services: Collaboration Optimization ServicesLet’s take a look at a few customers that have dramatically decreased operating expenses and increased business value by using new collaboration technologies.
Thousands of dedicated specialists in collaboration architecture and design at Cisco and through our global network of partnersSupport thousands of customers each year from business advisory through operations and optimizationPortfolio of services across Collaboration portfolio – to help you meet comprehensive customer requirements Multiple delivery modelsWork with Cisco, work with partners or hybrid of the twoAcross the Cisco portfolio, Cisco partners leverage Cisco best practices and global infrastructure. We have teams working with partners every day to ensure consistency and alignment with Cisco methodologies, tools, and best practices. We scale intellectual capital through sales and delivery training, leading practices, project methodologies, service-practice templates, and detailed project management diagrams. We offer partners certifications and specializations. We enable partners, and we also work with them through programs like Cisco Branded Services and Cisco Collaborative Professional Services.Solutions for healthcare, video streaming/recording, banking, education, manufacturing, and retailBest practices and tools to achieve consistently high customer satisfaction and reduce TCO -across the Cisco portfolio, Cisco Services bring together design guides, configuration guides, troubleshooting guides, and case studies, referencing over 600 best practices. Customers with support contracts have authorized access to high-value technical resources and a growing number of tools. More than 90,000 technical documents are available to customers.
This slides showcases the types of business experiences that can be enabled with Cisco Collaboration solutions.
Services Customer Case Study
Our efforts to work more collaboratively have affected every aspect of our organization: our work processes, our culture, and our technology. We have changed our processes for working together. Instead of a command-and-control hierarchy, we embrace collaborative principles in our work environment. And finally, of course, we use and test out our collaborative technologies in our own everyday work—using standards-based XMPP presence to find and work with colleagues both within and outside of Cisco, holding global meetings via TelePresence, and offering training via WebEx, and creating communities of interest on the Integrated Workforce Experience (IWE) based on Quad, to name several examples.Transition:Collaboration intuitively feels like the right direction to increase business competitiveness. But what kinds of return can we gain from collaboration?
As I mentioned earlier, one of Cisco’s strategic pillars for collaboration is to enable flexible deployment and consumption models.We made our first release of Quad (v 2.0) available on a limited basis to enterprise organizations with 10,000 users and above via a premises-based deployment on our V-Block infrastructure. In November, we launched Quad 2.1, extending availability to organizations with between 2,500 and 10,000 users on our UCS C-Series Platform.Now, with a new hosted model, Quad is available to organizations with more than 1000 users. As with any hosted collaboration solution, this is well-suited for customers who don’t want to deploy or manage Quad themselves within their own environments, and/or are looking for faster deployment time.
