Cisco boosts collaboration portfolio

Cisco has 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.
As the number of service providers and partners offering Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Solution more than doubled in the past year 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.
As the number of WebEx meetings worldwide via the public Cisco WebEx cloud continues to soar — with a 38 percent 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.
Tarig Enaya, general manager, Cisco KSA, said: “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.”