Cisco today 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. Expanding the Cisco® Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS): 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. Extending Cisco WebEx® Web Conferencing to the Private Cloud: As the number of WebEx® meetings worldwide via the public Cisco WebEx cloud continues to soar – with a 38% 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 CloudVerseTM, 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. Additional Announcement Details: Hosted Collaboration Solution Developments - With HCS, customers can quickly deploy hosted collaboration offerings with minimized capital expenditures. Partners can accelerate their ability to deploy hosted collaboration offers with HCS partner enablement services. Cisco WebEx: Private Cloud Developments and Public Cloud Utilization - Cisco WebEx Meetings Server, incorporates tools for effective online meetings – both in the office and in mobile settings – in a private cloud environment. This solution is ideal for customers who prefer or require an on-premises offering and, in the “post-PC" era, want access to Web conferencing solutions that work across a multitude of devices and operating systems and integrate with existing UC capabilities. Customers can also utilize Cisco Planning and Design Services with this offering. At the same time, from the public Cisco WebEx cloud perspective, WebEx Web conferencing continues to see dramatic increases in utilization, also driven in large part by rapid changes occurring with today's workforce in the “post-PC" era. WebEx has noted the following increases in global utilization with its public cloud Web conferencing offering: Number of registered users up 30% year-over-year (Y-o-Y) with over 6.8 million registered users worldwide in August, 2012 Number of meetings up 38% Y-o-Y with 9.6 million meetings in August, 2012 Number of meeting minutes up 32% Y-o-Y with 1.8 billion minutes in August, 2012 Number of mobile client downloads: 2.7 million with more than 30% Y-o-Y growth in application downloads on Apple devices and more than 11% Y-o-Y growth for Android devices Supporting Quotes: Insert Local Spokesperson: “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." Additional Resources: Find more information about Cisco WebEx Meetings Server and Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution Learn more about Collaboration Services from Cisco and our partners. Engage with us through the Cisco Collaboration Community, @CiscoCollab on Twitter, and Cisco Collaboration on Facebook. And, hear directly from our Cisco Collaboration leaders through our Cisco Collaboration Blog.
