Cisco Showcases Growth in Cloud Collaboration and Announces New Cloud Capabilities and Services for Enterprises, Service Providers and Partners

LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire - Oct 16, 2012) - Cisco Collaboration Summit -- Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today unveiled multiple enhancements to its collaboration portfolio, delivered via public, private or hybrid cloud models, giving customers more ways to access an expanded set of market leading offerings. These offerings include telepresence, Web conferencing, unified communications (UC) and contact center solutions.

Announcement Highlights:

• Expanding the Cisco® Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS): As the number of service providers and partners offering Cisco's Hosted Collaboration Solution more than doubled in the past year (Cisco added 16 new partners this year, bringing the total to 34), Cisco is dramatically extending the application breadth and platform depth of the solution. The HCS offering includes advancements spanning Cisco TelePresence®, Customer Collaboration (contact center), Unified Communications and mobility. With these developments, HCS partners, including service providers, systems integrators, wholesalers and resellers can deliver an even more robust unified collaboration experience to their customers as an "as-a-service" cloud-based model.
• Extending Cisco WebEx® Web Conferencing to the Private Cloud: As the number of WebEx® meetings worldwide via the public Cisco WebEx cloud continues to soar -- with a 38% increase year over year -- many customers are also asking for a private cloud solution that provides the same level of collaboration capabilities with a consistent user experience and increased internal control. Cisco is addressing this request with Cisco WebEx Meetings Server, an offering designed for organizations that require or desire a fully "on-premises" conferencing solution housed in their own data centers.

These innovations continue to advance Cisco CloudVerse™, a previously announced set of solutions that provides the foundational elements that organizations need to build, manage and connect public, private and hybrid clouds. Cisco CloudVerse includes Cloud Applications and Services (the focus of today's announcement), Unified Data Center and the Cloud Intelligent Network. CloudVerse helps enable businesses to realize all of the benefits of clouds: an integrated and consistent assured collaboration experience, as well as improved agility, better economics and enhanced security.

Additional Announcement Details:

Hosted Collaboration Solution Developments

As Cisco continues to expand HCS, a variety of service providers and partners, including Damovo, eLoyalty (a TeleTech company), Orange Business Services, NTT Communications, Telefonica and Vodafone are combining their capabilities with HCS to deliver differentiated offers to their client base. In addition, new enterprise customers including D+M Group, Devoteam and Nokia Siemens Networks are adopting cloud-based collaboration from certified Cisco HCS partners to scale and simplify communication faster inside their organizations. With HCS, customers can quickly deploy hosted collaboration offerings with minimized capital expenditures. Partners can accelerate their ability to deploy hosted collaboration offers with HCS partner enablement services. New technologies, targeted for global availability in Q4 CY 2012* (based on coverage areas of partners and service providers) include:

• Extending TelePresence Capabilities in HCS:
  • TelePresence Meetings at "Your" Command: Partners can offer customers a "static bridge" service option, also known as "rendezvous conferencing," that allows them to conduct TelePresence meetings at any time, versus having to make a meeting reservation. This makes it even easier for HCS customers to extend video collaboration across their ecosystem.
  • Maximizing Return on Infrastructure Investment for Partners: Through the integration of Cisco TelePresence Exchange (CTX) into HCS, partners can more efficiently manage the infrastructure necessary to enable TelePresence and videoconferencing, while also leveraging that infrastructure across their entire customer base. This enables partners to avoid making separate infrastructure investments for each customer.
  • Expanding the reach of TelePresence: The CTX integration also offers customers the ability to connect multiple locations, including external vendors and suppliers, at the same time. Via the hosted model, customers simply buy or lease the endpoints and the partner provides the back end technology.

• Expanding HCS for Customer Collaboration: 
  • Simplifying Operations and Increasing Agent Productivity: Through HCS enhancements for Customer Collaboration, partners can easily manage multiple contact centers for customers. Additionally, HCS partners can arm customers with a highly-customizable Web 2.0 collaboration desktop that puts relevant information that call center agents need in a single, modifiable cockpit. Agents can use this information to assist callers faster, better, and with greater accuracy.

• Advancing HCS for Unified Communications (UC): Cisco is extending many of the latest Cisco UC capabilities announced earlier this summer to the cloud via HCS. Examples include:
  • Extend and Connect: This new feature of Cisco Unified Communications Manager works with Cisco Jabber™ and is designed to bring third-party phones into the Cisco UC environment. Users can simply input the phone number of their preferred voice device into a Jabber® client running on their Windows PC, and Cisco Unified Communications Manager will route voice traffic directly to that phone number. Jabber is a software client and includes presence, instant messaging (IM), voice, voice messaging, video, desktop sharing and conferencing.
  • Connecting the dots between enterprise and mobile networks: With IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) integration capabilities, Cisco HCS partners can offer Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) capabilities to their customers. This helps mobile service providers connect enterprise and mobile networks, offering seamless services between the two. This offering also enables operators to provide voice over 4G data networks. 

Cisco WebEx: Private Cloud Developments and Public Cloud Utilization

Cisco WebEx Meetings Server, targeted for global availability in Q4 CY 2012, incorporates tools for effective online meetings -- both in the office and in mobile settings -- in a private cloud environment. This solution is ideal for customers who prefer or require an on-premises offering and, in the "post-PC" era, want access to Web conferencing solutions that work across a multitude of devices and operating systems and integrate with existing UC capabilities. Customers can also utilize Cisco Planning and Design Services with this offering. With WebEx Meetings Server, customers can benefit from:

• The same great WebEx user experience as the public cloud solution, including WebEx clients for PC, Mac, iPhone and iPad; high quality video; sharing, annotation, and collaboration tools; recording and playback.
• Integration with Cisco's UC suite that extends IP telephony to conferencing, and provides escalation from a Jabber IM session to a full WebEx meeting directly from the Jabber client (targeted for availability January, 2013).
• A virtualized software solution designed for Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) servers that is easy to deploy and manage.

At the same time, from the public Cisco WebEx cloud perspective, WebEx Web conferencing continues to see dramatic increases in utilization, also driven in large part by rapid changes occurring with today's workforce in the "post-PC" era. WebEx has noted the following increases in global utilization with its public cloud Web conferencing offering:

• Number of registered users up 30% year-over-year (Y-o-Y) with over 6.8 million registered users worldwide in August, 2012
• Number of meetings up 38% Y-o-Y with 9.6 million meetings in August, 2012
• Number of meeting minutes up 32% Y-o-Y with 1.8 billion minutes in August, 2012
• Number of mobile client downloads: 2.7 million with more than 30% Y-o-Y growth in application downloads on Apple devices and more than 11% Y-o-Y growth for Android devices

Supporting Quotes:

OJ Winge, senior vice president, Collaboration Technology Group, Cisco
"At Cisco, we're seeing exceptional growth and adoption across our collaboration cloud offerings. Case in point: More than half of the world's leading service providers have adopted Cisco's HCS solution. We feel it's about choice. And, it's ultimately about providing exceptional end user experiences, regardless of the deployment model."

Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS):

John Jackson, vice president, Global Infrastructure and Vendor Management, D+M Group
"We've always wanted technology that would help us reduce silos across the company by increasing collaboration. At D+M, we deliver premium audio solutions around the world. In order to be successful, exceptional collaboration between our more than 2,000 globally dispersed employees is key. We looked for a hosted solution that's scalable, highly secure, reliable and expansive. Working with Cisco partner, West IP Communications, we have implemented Cisco's HCS and are already seeing the cloud-based technology drive cultural change at our company." (Note: A companion press release can be found here.)

Alberto Ferreira, CEO and president, Damovo do Brasil S.A.
"When we started to develop CaaS -- Collaboration as a Service, a joint solution to offer to the market, Damovo and Cisco decided to offer a simple, fast and easy-to-deploy UC service. The acceptance within the market has been incredibly high and we already have received the first orders. The value proposition for the customer is impressive and, after the basic implementation is complete, they can include video applications nearly as easily as adding a new voice extension in their old PBX system. And that's the right path to follow!"

Steven Pollema, president, eLoyalty, a TeleTech Company, Englewood, Colorado
"Market results clearly indicate that high-performing companies are delivering great customer experiences and investing in their customer relationships as a differentiator. This means communicating with their customers at the right time, through the right channel, with the right information and services and, in many cases, doing so proactively thereby preventing dissatisfaction and driving higher loyalty and trust. As a leader in customer experience technologies, a 12-year Cisco partner and now Cisco's first HCS cloud provider for Contact Center, eLoyalty has delivered business outcomes ranging from simple network cost reductions to improved sales in multi-channel campaigns -- all leveraging Cisco's collaboration suite. We, along with our enterprise clients, are very enthusiastic about Cisco's Hosted Collaboration Solutions (HCS). Cisco's hosted contact center solutions are paving the way for companies to offer a superior customer experience with the additional benefits of a cloud deployment."

Paul Molinier, vice president, Unified Communications and Collaboration, Orange Business Services
"Cloud services are in Orange Business Services' DNA. Our experience in network and communications services places us in the best position to deliver high performance cloud computing services to our customers. Thanks to the integration of Cisco HCS and CTX platforms within Orange's cloud infrastructure, our customers are now reaping the rewards of delivering 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 vs capex -- and more security -- data protection from the device to the data center."

Christophe Merckens, CIO, Devoteam
"Devoteam deployed Orange Business Services' 'Business Together as a Service' solution primarily because of the ability to provide a quality voice system from the cloud. Because it is powered by Cisco HCS and Orange, Devoteam also has access to the market leading cloud collaboration solution that included the full Cisco UC and Collaboration suite, all delivered in a flexible/agile IT model and predictable per-user service fee structure. Once in place, Orange added a range of features 'on demand' that have improved efficiency, increased internal collaboration, and reduced costs. Devoteam's management team view both Orange and Cisco as trusted advisors."

Dr. Manfred Immitzer, Global CIO, Nokia Siemens Networks
"Productivity of our 60,000 end-users and their collaboration within NSN and with our customers is key to NSN success in our highly competitive market. Cisco collaboration tools provide a great user experience across different end-points and have become the backbone of NSN's business. Our IT strategy sets strong preference for buying IT solutions as a service and recently we have moved with Cisco and their partners increasingly to the cloud which enables improved responsiveness to ever changing business needs through flexible consumption models and 'evergreen' platforms."

Jose L. Gamo, CEO, Telefonica Multinational Solutions
"This 60,000 global seat deployment is a landmark for this industry. We are truly crossing the 'Cloud Chasm', as Nokia Siemens Networks take advantage of our end-to-end global service based on Cisco's collaboration architecture, a leading technology addressing our customers' requirements for cost-effective unified communications and collaboration solutions. Nokia Siemens Network, after considering both premises and cloud-based collaboration solutions from a number of vendors, chose the safest pair of hands in the business and are migrating to the cloud with Telefonica, powered by Cisco's HCS."

Mitsuru Takayama, director, Voice &Video Communication Service Department, NTT Communications
"By adopting Cisco HCS as a platform, we could achieve the provision of a cloud-based Unified Communications service on a global scale to drive work-style innovation of our customers. In order to support our customers' global business successes, we will continue our efforts to expand features and offer reliable, globally seamless services with the aim of becoming a Global ICT Partner. The partnership with Cisco is critical for us to realize it with continuous technology innovation."

Sandy Walker, manager, Fixed & Unified Communications Practice, Vodafone
"We're very excited about Vodafone OneNet Global Enterprise and our partnership with Cisco and HCS. Cisco HCS is a strategic and scalable platform that we have integrated with Vodafone's mobile cloud to make it easy for our customers to enable anywhere, anytime, any device collaboration. It is also helping Vodafone deliver on our vision for the future of business communications."

Cisco WebEx:

John James, eExtension team leader, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF), Queensland, Australia
"Queensland is Australia's largest producer and exporter of beef. We prefer 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. 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 $6000 in associated salaries, and over $2500 in airfare costs. These savings enable us to do more with tax payers' money."

Sean Fitzgerald, senior manager of Network Services, Harris, Melbourne, Florida
"We understand the critical role robust secure Web conferencing solutions can play in enabling our global employees to collaborate inside and outside of the company in a simple and reliable manner with a high quality, consistent user experience. For those organizations preferring to deploy an on-premise, scalable and secure solution, we find great promise in the capabilities and capacity Cisco WebEx Meetings Server can provide."

Dr. Oliver Breiden, Program Office, METRO PROPERTIES -- a member of METRO GROUP, Düsseldorf, Germany
"Cisco WebEx has helped us to improve the way we collaborate with colleagues around the globe. It enables open and direct communication; both in terms of hierarchy and geography! METRO GROUP operates over 2,000 Cash & Carry stores, super markets, consumer electronics and department stores spanning Europe, Asia and Africa. Needless to say that it is a real advantage to convey key messages, offer trainings and provide regular information updates in a direct and cost effective way to a worldwide community of colleagues. The technology is easy to use and runs smoothly on different platforms. WebEx meetings and events are a great supplement to face-to-face meetings, teleconferencing, and email communication."

Skip Tappen, chief operating officer, NWN -- a Cisco Gold Certified Partner
"In the cloud collaboration space, Cisco has demonstrated market leadership with a unique and robust offer, and has now added even more flexibility with WebEx Meetings Server supporting on-premises deployments. We are seeing Cisco's partner-centricity being extended to its cloud go-to-market approach through such things as incentivizing its sales teams to sell partner cloud services. We believe this reflects on Cisco's commitment to having the best go-to-market, partner-centric cloud strategy and offering in the collaboration market."

Additional Resources:

• Watch the Collaboration Summit keynote streamed live online on Oct 16 at 8:30 a.m. PT (replay available at 11 a.m. PT). Learn more about Cisco's collaboration strategy and new cloud collaboration innovations.
• Find more information about Cisco WebEx Meetings Server and Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution
• Learn how D+M Group is benefitting from Cisco's hosted collaboration offerings here
• Watch this video where partners explain why cloud collaboration is on the rise
• Cisco Unified Communications (UC) Release 9.0
• Learn more about Collaboration Services from Cisco and our partners 
• Learn how Cisco Capital's flexible financing services can streamline the acquisition of Cisco technology for customers and partners around the world
• Engage with us through the Cisco Collaboration Community, @CiscoCollab on Twitter, and Cisco Collaboration on Facebook. And, hear directly from our Cisco Collaboration leaders through our Cisco Collaboration Blog. 
• Partners: Visit the Cisco Partner Central website

*Unless otherwise noted

Technorati Tags:
Cloud, Public, Private, Hosted, Cisco Unified Communications, Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Customer Collaboration, contact center, video, WebEx, Cisco WebEx, mobile, Hosted Collaboration Solution, HCS

About Cisco Collaboration

From award-winning IP communications to mobility, customer care, Web conferencing, messaging, enterprise social software, and interoperable telepresence experiences, Cisco brings together network-based, integrated collaboration solutions based on open standards. These solutions offered across on-premise, cloud-based or virtualized platforms, as well as services from Cisco and our partners, are designed to help promote business growth, innovation and productivity. They are also designed to help accelerate team performance, protect investments, and simplify the process of finding the right people and information.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

Availability Disclaimer: Many of the products and features described herein remain in varying stages of development and will be offered on a when-and-if-available basis. This products and features are subject to change at the sole discretion of Cisco, and Cisco will have no liability for delay in the delivery or failure to deliver any of the products or features set forth in this document.

RSS Feed for Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/rss-feeds