SAN JOSE, Calif. – March 12, 2014 – Cisco today made a series of announcements aimed to put high-quality video at the fingertips of everyone in the organization—in organizations of all sizes.
Technology makes it easier to connect and collaborate with colleagues, partners, and customers from any location—whether that's the work office, the home office, a hotel room, or a coffee shop. Reliable, high-quality, interoperable video—as opposed to video that's webcam-based, unreliable, or incapable of scaling—plays a significant role in the collaboration mix. With it, a San Francisco-based manager can have face-to-face meetings in London in the morning, spend time with the East Coast team in the afternoon, and close out the day with the manufacturing team in China–an eight-hour feat even the most seasoned traveler couldn't achieve by plane alone.
But there isn't enough of this technology: Industry statistics show that more than 93 percent of meeting rooms globally aren't equipped with high-quality video. So, many times we have to do without.
For truly amazing things to happen, Cisco believes video needs to be available everywhere: from the browser to the boardroom to all the spaces in between, including the other 93 percent of meeting rooms. To get those rooms video-connected, Cisco today announced the following:
Great experiences for every conference room
Cisco announced three video systems so people can effectively share video and content in rooms ranging from small to large, depending upon their needs as well as the setup of the room. These fully integrated systems combine a sleek, award-winning design with a simple and intuitive user experience. In its second generation, the Cisco TelePresence® MX200 is optimal for smaller rooms, is value-priced to scale, is incredibly easy to install, and offers premium HD resolution out of the box. The Cisco TelePresence MX700 and Cisco TelePresence MX800 represent the performance line and are ideal for medium- to large-sized rooms. These integrated systems come equipped with premium HD resolution and support H.265, which will give users incredible quality at half the regularly-needed bandwidth.
No compromises between price and performance
Costing less than the price of a PC, the Cisco TelePresence SX10 Quick Set builds upon elements many companies already have in smaller meeting spaces—flat panel displays—to create incredible video meeting spaces. Sure to be popular with SMBs, this system turns any standard flat panel display into an HD video collaboration system in 10 minutes or less. By making such a high-quality experience available at such an attractive price point, Cisco aims to make video the de facto collaboration tool for every conference room.
Everyone has a front-row seat
As anyone who has endured a video call via webcam will tell you, a video session is only as good as the camera technology behind it. Cisco announces two new offerings in this category, both of which work with many of the solutions announced today. The Cisco TelePresence Precision 60 offers the industry's best image quality (1080p60), is highly adaptable to varying light conditions, and has a large zoom range, ensuring that the entire view is captured. The Cisco TelePresence SpeakerTrack 60 gives everyone the best seat at the table; based on the Precision 60, it is a unique dual camera system that intelligently finds the active speaker in larger meeting rooms and quickly zooms in to show his or her image. Intelligent facial recognition and voice triangulation technology lets the camera follow the speaker from table to white board and then seamlessly move to the next speaker when he or she begins to talk. The result is a more natural conversation—smoother transitions, less latency, and fewer disruptions.
For unique rooms and use cases – the integrator's dream
Not every room is built alike, and not every customer has the same needs. The Cisco TelePresence SX80 is an ideal solution for integrators looking to equip large, unique spaces with video. The new, powerful, and flexible Cisco® SX80 can be paired with a variety of camera options (including the two announced in the paragraph above), can support up to three screens, and joins the MX700 and MX800 as the industry's first platforms to support H.265 for great quality at significant bandwidth savings.
Making every screen count with Intelligent Proximity
It takes more than mere travel avoidance to make video "better than being there"; things get truly interesting when video technology is additive to the experience. Cisco is committed to delivering these additive innovations, and in that vein today announced that it will integrate the innovative beta feature Intelligent Proximity with several of these new endpoints.* With Intelligent Proximity, the Cisco video system senses any smartphones and tablets that users have brought into the meeting and asks if the user would like to add them into the experience. Once paired, the user can easily view shared materials, save needed slides, and even review previously shared content without asking the presenter to go back – all directly from the mobile device's display. It's a completely new way to make mobile devices an extended part of the collaboration video experience.
Making collaboration simple to install, deploy, and scale
Giving users delightful experiences every time requires collaboration technology that is simple for IT and partners to set up, maintain, and deploy. To that end, Cisco announced the following to help organizations get going quickly:
- Giving organizations of all sizes the building blocks to simplify installation, deployment, and scale. The ability to order all the applications needed to support collaboration environments with a single SKU—and get them on a preloaded, ready-to-activate server—dramatically eases deployment and maintenance. Today Cisco enhanced its popular, existing packaged solution for smaller organizations, the Business Edition 6000, by adding all the software needed to manage pervasive HD video conferencing and including a new, low-cost, 25-user starter license bundle and a new wizards-based tool that dramatically reduces deployment time. Due to the popularity of the BE6000 and demand from larger organizations for a similar offering, Cisco today also introduces the Business Edition 7000 for organizations with more than 1,000 users. Built to help IT keep pace with the organization, the new solution quickly and easily expands to meet the growing demands of the business.
- Collaboration in the Cloud. Cisco is committed to offering organizations the same collaboration user experience regardless of whether they opt for a premise-based solution, a cloud-based model, or a bit of both. To that end, Cisco today enhanced the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution to make it easier for remote or mobile users to get cloud-based collaboration over the Internet with no VPN required. Cisco also made HCS more attractive for mid-sized organizations by giving them the ability to cost-effectively get voice mail and smaller contact centers for 20-100 agents. Cisco today also improved operational efficiencies with management tools for quicker onboarding and better end-customer experience. Learn more about these innovations and how they will help HCS partners reach new markets here.
AVAILABILITY
All products announced today are expected to be available in spring 2014.
* For more information on this Intelligent Proximity news, go here.
Availability Disclaimer: Many of the products and features described herein remain in varying stages of development and will be offered on a when-and-if-available basis. Products and features are subject to change at the sole discretion of Cisco, and Cisco will have no liability for delay in the delivery or failure to deliver any of the products or features set forth in this document.
SUPPORTING QUOTES
Jeremy Stubbs, VP Business Development, Sabre Travel Network
"As a global technology company, Sabre provides travel and video management solutions to thousands of corporations with our GetThere business. We know the importance of business travel and video collaboration with customers, partners, and suppliers. There are times when video really can be just as good as being there, and can play a pivotal role for organizations large and small—as long as it is delivered at the right price, in the right format, and provides business-class quality, reliability, security, and interoperability. Cisco gives customers all of this – from software on their desktops to small and large room-based systems to help customers enhance collaboration everywhere."
Richard Johnston, IT Manager, Raymond Handling Concepts Corporation
"We are a small but mighty company that uses enterprise-level solutions to enhance the bottom-line effectiveness of our entire company. When researching this, we found that Cisco's Hosted Collaboration Solution delivered by Collab9 with voice, video, instant messaging, and presence was by far the best cloud option for our company. Not only did cloud-based collaboration increase the productivity of our workers, but it also financially reduced our recurring monthly costs, showing an immediate positive impact to our bottom line."
Chris Walston, CIO, Coldwell Banker Howard Perry Watson
"As far as organizations go we're on the small side-but we're certainly big enough to need secure and highly reliable voice, video, and collaboration services. To be productive and efficient, we needed to support a bring-your-own device program and give our employees IM, presence, and click-to-call not only from their desktop but also from the device of their choice. Moving to a Cisco-Powered cloud service gave us exactly what we needed—at a price we could afford and in a configuration that frees up our IT staff to focus on other key projects."
James de Poortere, CEO of Viju Americas
"At Viju, we're committed to uniting technology, innovation, and creativity in order to increase business performance. The new video collaboration solutions introduced today by Cisco couple industry-leading innovation, such as H.265 ready-endpoints and intuitive user interfaces, with value and affordability."
Rowan Trollope, SVP/GM, Collaboration Technology Group, Cisco
"Previous attempts to deliver collaboration have been incremental and good. But the cold, hard truth is that today's collaboration tools are forcing users to do today's jobs with yesterday's technology. It is time for a change. The industry is ready for a great leap forward, and Cisco is making that leap. These new products represent the first phase of a multi-phase rollout in how Cisco is reimagining collaboration and setting the foundation for a revolution in the industry; stay tuned for more."
SUPPORTING RESOURCES
Collaboration Blog by Cisco's Rowan Trollope
Partner Blog by Cisco's Richard McLeod
Video of new products
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