'Forward Looking Organisations To Adopt Collaboration Services'

Cisco recently launched its suite of collaboration services integrating Cisco UC, Cisco Telepresence and Cisco WebEx. The new suite is equipped to enable users to connect with each other from any workplace, on any device and all applications. Biztech2.0 spoke to Minhaj Zia, national sales manager, Unified Communications, Cisco India & SAARC to get a lowdown on the company’s latest offering.

The time of the launch arouses curiosity. With all the financial turmoil, do you think the market opportunity can be capitalised?

With global markets facing a big challenge over the coming months, forward looking organisations are utilising this period to consolidate and are looking at ways by which further efficiencies can be leveraged from their existing investments, technology or otherwise.

More from Biztech

Future Group - Reliance Retail Deal approved by CCI RBI ban on cryptocurrencies takes effect; prohibition could force investors to tap the black market

Businesses will continue to invest in technology to differentiate the customer experience they provide from that of their competitors. To provide a better customer experience, it is important to enhance employee collaboration, productivity, speed of decision making, time to market, etc. All of this can be achieved by deploying technologies such as TelePresence and other collaborative solutions such as WebEx, which reduces the need for employees to travel.

What are the main benefits of the collaboration portfolio?

Business today requires us to navigate complex cross-company networks of customers, colleagues and partners and sustainable competitive advantage comes from how well we navigate these global business networks to accelerate distributed business processes. Only those companies that are quick to adapt to this collaborative work process will thrive in the new flat world.

IT organisations struggle to give knowledge workers the collaborative tools to innovate and adapt without compromising the core IT responsibilities of security, reliability and compliance. For doing this, IT organisations need a collaborative framework that allows them to combine the reach, speed and flexibility of Web 2.0 with the security, policies and management of enterprise networking. They need a platform that integrates with what they use today and can adapt and evolve as their business needs change.

Collaboration requires a network-centric platform approach. Cisco’s new suite uses Web 2.0 tools and APIs to expose network applications and services. This network-as-the-platform approach means customers can rapidly deploy the solution on a range of client devices (PCs, mobile phones) and integrate with public tools (wikis, IM, Google widgets) and corporate applications (WebEx, UC, TelePresence, mobility services engine).

How is Cisco’s collaboration portfolio service different from similar services in the market?

The foundation of collaboration revolves around enabling people, applications, and businesses to connect to each other over the IP network. This provides the scope to deliver applications that can be quickly deployed on premises or as software-as-a-service, which in turn enables customers to choose application deployment options based on business needs rather than being constrained by architectural limitations.

However, current alternatives are difficult to deploy and use. Most have long deployment cycles; don’t scale to mobile workspaces and lack business controls. People can’t connect and communicate across firewalls or corporate boundaries.

Can VSATs support the Cisco TelePresence experience? If yes, then how can SMBs or even large enterprises leverage the model?

In the past, VSAT technology was unable to support high bandwidth applications, however, with the introduction of new technologies and bandwidth optimising technologies, the throughput on VSAT networks have increased. These networks can now support applications such as TelePresence.

Given the up-front investment required to set up a dedicated TelePresence system within an organisation, many small and medium businesses, we believe will utilise TelePresence services provided by service providers on a pay-per-use basis. Tata Communications has already launched such a service in the country and other service providers are also looking at this model.

Can you briefly explain the advantages of using ‘SaaS’ as a delivery model?

The on-demand, hosted approach, employs a Software-as-a-Service model. The benefits to an enterprise by adopting an on-demand, Software-as-a-Service model are the ability to serve large numbers of concurrent users with thin client applications over the Internet; ease of deployment, with no large upfront investment, and no hardware to buy; enterprise-grade security, reliability, and performance; ease of maintenance and upgrades freeing the IT department to focus on strategic issues; platform independence; integration with enterprise applications such as CRM, e-mail and IM, salesforce.com etc.