At its Cisco Collaboration Summit in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Cisco unveiled improvements to its collaboration portfolio, including telepresence, Web conferencing, unified communications and contact center  solutions.
Cisco reported that the number of service providers and partners offering its Hosted Collaboration Solution more than doubled in the past year from 16 to 34. Now, with enhancements to its TelePresence Exchange System, Customer Collaboration, UC and mobility products, Cisco is promising its partners that they can deliver a better UC experience to customers as an "as-a-service" cloud -based model.
Orange Business Services is a prime example. Paul Molinier, vice president of Unified Communications and Collaboration at Orange Business Services, said the integration of Cisco HCS and CTX platforms within the company's cloud infrastructure is making it possible for its customers to deliver as-a-service video and collaboration services across their organizations.
"With Cisco HCS and CTX inside, Orange delivers end-to-end communication and collaboration solutions from the cloud bringing more agility -- as a service model -- more competitiveness -- opex versus capex -- and more security -- data protection from the device to the data center," Molinier said.
A Private WebEx
Cisco also reports that WebEx meetings via the public Cisco WebEx cloud rose 38 percent year over year, but customers are asking for a private cloud-based solution with similar capabilities. In response, Cisco rolled out Cisco WebEx Meetings Server for an on-premise conferencing solution hosted on internal data servers.
John James, eExtension team leader for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in Queensland, Australia, said he prefers to engage face-to-face with many of the 12,000 beef producers across Queensland, but in-person meetings can be challenging given that the state is seven times larger than the United Kingdom.
"Cisco's WebEx cloud-based conferencing solution enables DAFF to engage with producers more frequently and in a highly interactive and environmentally friendly way," James said. "We've estimated that, on average, a one-hour Web conference with 10 participants from regional centers around Queensland saves DAFF 60 hours of travel time and approximately $6,000 in associated salaries, and over $2,500 in airfare costs. These savings enable us to do more with taxpayers' money." (continued...)
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