Cisco is turning its Spark messaging application into a converged communication platform, highlighting an important ongoing trend in the enterprise collaboration space. Here are the details from an official Cisco blog:
Today, Cisco reinvents the collaboration experience. We are announcing a brand-new offer to deliver the three types of communication tools people use at work the most— messaging, meeting, and calling—from the cloud. In addition, we’re making it possible for our phones and video conferencing systems to plug into the cloud and access these new services.
This changes everything because:
It is designed from the ground up for highly secure collaboration that is delightful to use. Today, most of us use unconnected tools for team messaging, virtual meetings and phone calls. Called Cisco Spark, our new offer mixes messaging, meeting and calling in such a simple way that it is hard to tell where one ends and the next begins. With Cisco Spark, all three are parts of a complete user experience. For instance, with a single click you can turn a phone call into a video meeting. With a swipe you can move a video call from a room system to your mobile phone and then to another room—so you don’t have to miss anything when you need to move.
It connects phone systems to the cloud. Enterprises have a lot invested in phone systems and other on-premises equipment. Cisco Spark Hybrid Services enables entirely new and amazing experiences by connecting this equipment to the cloud.
We think some of the best ideas will come from the outside. Cisco Spark for Developers provides powerful, open APIs so developers can create innovative and useful apps that extend the value of Spark.
Some components of the new Spark are available now, with full availability in the U.S. and other countries next year. It will be sold via per-user subscription through Cisco partners.
The Bottom Line
Cisco may say it's "reinventing" collaboration with the announcement, but the fact is that rivals such as Unify, Glip, Redbooth and others are taking similar approaches. It's a trend that has needed to happen, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky.
"One of the biggest productivity challenges that employees face is an overwhelming number of choices in tools," Lepofsky says. "When conversations are spread across email, chat, phone calls, video conferences, blogs, wikis, file-sharing and social networks, it makes it difficult to know where information resides."
Lepofsky is the author of an upcoming Constellation Research report that examines what IT organizations need to consider when planning their next collaboration infrastructure.
He writes that most organizations will benefit from a suite approach to collaboration, rather than best-of-breed. That's because the perceived advantages of the latter, such as faster innovation cycles, are being challenged by collaboration suite vendors. Other advantages for suites include a single contract, simplified sign-on and a more consistent user experience, he writes.
"There are certainly times when stand-alone products may be the right choice, at least in the short term before the commoditization stage of the innovation lifecycle," he writes. "While platforms provide a robust feature set, they may not provide the full functionality of a product that comes from a company with a single focus."
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