Cisco has recently announced additions to its enterprise
collaboration
portfolio. According to Cisco, the expanded portfolio has up to 61
new additions
and product enhancements which include hosted e-mail, enterprise
social
software, a media engine which allows TelePresence interoperability
on various
devices, Pulse offering and integration capabilities between
Microsoft
Communicator, WebEx Connect and others.
Prominent additions to the portfolio include the company’s
new Enterprise
Collaboration Platform. Having observed security on consumer-based
social
networks as being a major challenge, Cisco has introduced an
enterprise-class
social software portal that features a corporate directory with
social
networking capabilities.
The company says that its portal will allow users to create team
spaces and
community environments ‘on the fly.’ The portal is also
designed to offer a
customizable framework to integrate legacy business applications
and Web 2.0
content. The platform supports real-time voice and video
communication and can
also take in feeds from public social networks such as Twitter.
The hosted e-mail service called the Cisco WebEx Mail, is based on
technology
acquired as a result of the company’s PostPath acquisition.
The e-mail solution
offers native Microsoft Outlook interoperability, optimized mobile
device
support, and browser-independent AJAX Web 2.0 access.
Other offerings include the Intercompany TelePresence Directory
which gathers
information about all TelePresence connections available across
different
organizations in a particular region making this available in a
directory
format.
The portfolio also includes the Intercompany Media Engine which
maps data
communication between organizations over the PSTN and IP network.
This engine then creates a network table of organizations and
redirects all future traffic
over the IP network.
Minhaj Zia, National Sales Manager, Unified Communication India
& SAARC,
Cisco Systems India observes that service providers can benefit
from this
solution and use the network table to offer it as a directory
service to
organizations.
Zia also adds that the solutions (currently available only in the
US and
Canada) should be available in India within the next six months to
a year.