BOSTON, Mass. – June 20, 2011 – Today at Enterprise 2.0, Cisco announced that the  Cisco Quad™ enterprise collaboration platform will be offered as a hosted and managed deployment model, delivered initially in the United States and Canada through ACS (a Xerox company), in Europe through Logicalis UK, and in Australia through Alphawest (a wholly owned subsidiary of Optus).This new option, well-suited for customers who aren't able or don't want to deploy or manage Cisco Quad themselves, will extend choice and flexibility in how customers implement and use the platform, and will create professional services and integration opportunities for channel partners, strengthening and broadening their customer relationships. 

Cisco also announced that systems integration partner, Capgemini will consult organizations in a variety of ways pertaining to their deployments of Cisco Quad, from defining use cases and business goals for social collaboration to implementing and integrating Quad within the customer's existing processes and environments, as well as driving governance and adoption to ensure the effective use of the platform. 

Additionally, Cisco announced its upcoming release of Quad 2.5, which will include pre-built integrations with leading content management and instant messaging platforms from EMC, Microsoft, and IBM, as well as a new mobile application for the Android-based Cisco Cius™ tablet. Cisco Quad 2.5 will feature a broad set of capabilities that help end users tailor Quad to their specific needs, and a comprehensive set of services that are specifically designed to accelerate engagement and adoption.

Regardless of how customers deploy the Cisco Quad platform, business workers within those organizations will have the ability to create virtual working groups, find and interact with colleagues who have common interests or expertise, share files or videos with team members working on similar projects, and instantly start web conferences or chat sessions.

Enabling Choice and Broadened Availability

• With this announcement, Cisco Quad customers are able to choose between an on-premises deployment that they can control and manage themselves, or, as a partner hosted and managed dedicated offering.
• Mid-market companies with 1,000 employees and up now have an affordable and quick-to-deploy route to take advantage of the platform's collaborative capabilities.

Accelerating Cisco Quad Implementation and Adoption

• As a global systems integrator, Capgemini will use Quad as they work with customers to transform their collaboration methodology. An initial targeted vertical is life sciences expanding to additional markets over time.
• As organizations look to integrate the Cisco Quad platform, there is change and transition involved in how employees collaborate. Customers have the option to use new change management and adoption services from Cisco that are specifically designed to optimize value and minimize the impact of change on people, process, organization and business. These services, available today, cover assessment, strategy and governance, marketing communications, and training and planning.

Cisco Quad 2.5 Improves Employee Engagement and Productivity

• With Quad 2.5, Cisco is integrating its activity streams and its "watch list" functionality to enable business users to more easily define, filter, and improve the relevance of the content they consume from their professional networks.
• Cisco Quad now supports file attachments and multimedia within the micro-blogging function, taking people beyond just publishing status updates. Employees can, for example, ask their entire network for the most relevant presentations or videos and get a quick response that doesn't clog inboxes with huge file sizes, a benefit that can help drive greater adoption.
• Cisco Quad 2.5 proactively suggests recommendations for users to act on – such as people to follow, communities to join, and new posts that may be of interest. These recommendations are based on their own activity within the Cisco Quad platform, or the activities of the people within their professional networks.
• Cisco Quad is available on a variety of mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and now the Cisco Cius tablet. Cisco will continue to expand its mobile support with native applications for additional devices and platforms.

Extend the Value of Existing Investments

• The Cisco Quad open architecture allows businesses to extend the value of their existing investments in EMC Documentum and Microsoft SharePoint 2007.
• Through pre-built integrations with these industry-leading content management platforms, customers will be able to collaborate on their content using social collaboration and integrated unified communications capabilities within Quad.
• Cisco Quad 2.5 will also come with pre-built integrations into leading enterprise instant messaging (IM) platforms, including Microsoft OCS 2007, IBM Sametime8.5.1, and Cisco Jabber™.
  • These integrations will enable pervasive presence and instant messaging between Cisco Quad and these various IM clients. So, if one person is logged into Cisco Quad, and the other is only logged into his or her IM client, the two people can still initiate and conduct an IM session.
• Channel partners will also be able to easily extend the value of their existing managed services investments by adding Cisco Quad to their collaboration offerings. With the addition of Cisco Quad, channel partners can design and implement a unique social collaboration experience for their customers. 

Supporting Quotes:

Nagesh Kunamneni, chief technology officer, ITO Strategy & Service Management, ACS, a Xerox company:

"Our clients will see immediate benefits from Quad. ACS can simplify our clients' business operations by installing this collaboration software in a matter of days so they can focus on their customers."

Lanny Cohen, CEO, Capgemini North America:

"Purchasing social software alone won't make a business collaborative. There is a complex process involved in integrating systems into a collaboration platform and to shifting business culture to adopt new services. We're working with customers today to help them figure out how social software can transform their business and they can not only leverage, but uplevel the value of previous technology investments for business success."

Murali Sitaram, vice president and general manager, Collaboration Software Group, Cisco:

"Since we introduced Cisco Quad last year, we've taken many steps to make it the most flexible and adaptable social software platform on the market. Today's announcements further our vision and commitment to enterprise social software and unified communications. With proven global partners delivering hosted and implementation services, we will be able to help our customers accelerate adoption and realize business benefits more quickly."

Supporting Resources:

• Discover more features and benefits of Cisco Quad
• Keep up with Cisco's news by visiting the company's Platform Blog.
• For more information about Cisco's collaboration news and activities visit the Collaboration Blog or follow us viaTwitter @CiscoCollab.

Tags/Keywords:

Cisco, Quad, enterprise social software, collaboration, video, ACS, hosted, cloud, unified communications

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About Cisco Collaboration

From award-winning IP communications to mobility, customer care, Web conferencing, messaging, enterprise social software, and interoperable telepresence experiences, Cisco brings together network-based, integrated collaboration solutions based on open standards. These solutions offered across on-premises, cloud-based or virtualized platforms, as well as services from Cisco and our partners, are designed to help promote business growth, innovation and productivity. They are also designed to help accelerate team performance, protect investments, and simplify the process of finding the right people and information.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

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