Cisco Collaboration Summit

The big news at the Cisco Collaboration Summit recently was all about Spark. In addition to Spark the Service, Cisco also announced Spark Hybrid Services, and Spark for Developers. Cisco introduced Spark (nee Project Squared) last year at Enterprise Connect, and at that time Spark was essentially a messaging application. According to Rowan Trollope, Spark was "redesigned to deliver a magical experience." (Note: Spark has moved from a delightful experience to a magical one).

I'm inclined to think so, and that's how Rowan Trollope framed the overall theme of last week's Cisco Collaboration Summit. Several fellow UC Experts were there, and some of us have already shared our thoughts here on UCStrategies and elsewhere. I don't want to duplicate what's already been covered, and will focus here on some key differentiators that I think support Rowan's theme.

Several of us at UCStrategies attended last week's Cisco Collaboration Summit, and while the details are still largely under NDA, we are able to express some high level thoughts. I already shared some takeaways and visuals on my blog, but there's a lot more to talk about.

For most of us, it's pretty easy to tell which way you'd like to see this question answered. Few companies fit the "us-versus-them" mold in the UC space better than Cisco, and there are lots of people in both camps - and not really that many in the middle.

Introduction

Unified Communications (UC) has been a term in use for close to 7+ years now, and elements of it back to the 1990s. At a high level it's "communications integrated to optimize business processes." My colleague Marty Parker provides "A Short History of UC" in his article of that name.

There were lots of new faces at the Cisco Collaboration Summit in Boca Raton, mixed in with a few familiar ones. Channel partners, analysts, and consultants had the opportunity to meet the new executive team and to hear about Cisco's strategy in the collaboration space. The general attendee consensus is that Rowan Trollope got two thumbs up as the new SVP/GM Collaboration, as did the rest of the executive team, including John Hernandez (who we all know and love), Snorre Kjesbu, Jens Meggers, Jonathan Rosenberg, Steve Slattery, and Thomas Wyatt.

In this year's Cisco Collaboration Summit in Boca Raton, Florida, the company has announced several improvements made to its various collaboration wares for the enterprise. The newly rolled out enhancements include Cisco Expressway, Jabber Guest, new features for the TelePresence MX300, the new midmarket-targeted Cisco IP Phone Series 7800, and Intelligent Proximity.

Cisco brought together analysts, consultants, and channel partners in Los Angeles to present an update of its Collaboration products and strategy. One of the best sessions was led by Richard McLeod and featured several of Cisco's channel partners. Richard introduced the session by stating, once again, that Cisco is "a partner-centric company," noting that of its $4.1B collaboration sales, 95 percent of the sales were done through partners.