Cisco Jabber Enhances Collaboration Across Platforms, Devices, and Web Browsers

Cisco has recently revealed new solutions to help with collaboration in a "post-PC" era. In order to move past the limitations of PC-based communication, it's focusing on allowing people to collaborate from anywhere at any time with any device or application with the next generation of Cisco WebEx and Cisco Jabber.

Cisco's new innovations focus around virtualization and unified communications, while advancing the offerings available through the Cisco Collaboration Cloud. It includes advancements in HD video, as well as enhanced mobile capabilities, and extends cloud conferencing to more people with a free basic edition of WebEx for three or fewer people.

Cisco WebEx now allows for greater cross-company collaboration, helping users access and collaborate on files and presentations in the cloud through their PC or mobile device, check availability through presence and contact their colleagues, as well as schedule meetings and share relevant documents any time, and providing several other capabilities. IT administrators can set policy controls, and it connects easily to Cisco TelePresence meetings from Cius and Apple mobile devices.

The Cisco Jabber Web plug-in allows companies and developers to embed Cisco UC capabilities into their web browsers, allowing users in a cloud-based application or a line of business-based application to find and communicate with co-workers with presence. It lets developers enable web applications for collaboration with a new software developer kit within the Cisco Developer Network, providing them with sample codes, instructional videos, and an online community for discussion and support.

“Cisco is taking very positive steps to support collaborative business processes which are a core application of Unified Communications (UC),” said Marty Parker, UCStrategies co-founder and Principal Consultant at UniComm Consulting. “By expanding WebEx Meeting Center to support document sharing and editing before, during and after WebEx meetings, Cisco is now providing a form of persistent, information-centric collaborative workspaces. The Cisco Collaboration Cloud now includes combinations of Jabber (IM, presence and the user experience client), WebEx meetings, and hosted Telepresence. Cisco has made significant progress in integrating their UC acquisitions of WebEx and Jabber with their internally developed Telepresence solutions to create a competitive cloud-based UC package, as confirmed by beta customers including Nike, Bank of America and Modec.” 

Cisco WebEx will be available in December 2011, while the Cisco Jabber is now available for IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers. For more information, visit Cisco.

1 Responses to "Cisco Jabber Enhances Collaboration Across Platforms, Devices, and Web Browsers" - Add Yours

Marty 11/17/2011 8:15:24 AM

Cisco's emphasis on a 'post-PC' era seems to be more marketing than fact. PCs, especially laptops, continue to be the dominant business tool for collaborative work as well as most other processes. Further, the PC continues to deliver more power, functionality and bandwidth than almost any mobile device.

Thus, the era we're in for the next 5 to 10 years is probably better referred to as the 'co-PC era' in which PCs and mobile devices seamlessly co-exist, not as a 'post-PC' era.

Interestingly, many of Cisco's solutions run best on PCs, even while they do a fine job with mobile smart phones and tablets and stil make desk IP telephones. So, their actions reflect the realities much more than their marketing slogans do.