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Collaboration Tools an Essential Part of Business Communications

  By Laura Stotler, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Collaboration is absolutely essential for successful business communications in today’s digital technology climate. Not only do collaborative solutions boost productivity and foster innovation, they enable geographically dispersed employees to work together seamlessly from anywhere, at any time and through pretty much any device.

MarketsandMarkets forecasts the enterprise collaboration market will reach close to $50 billion by 2021, fueled by an increased use of mobile devices, the pervasiveness of social networking and a need for improved enterprise efficiencies. ISI (News - Alert) Telemanagement Solutions, a company that specializes in unified communications and collaboration technologies and solutions, recently discussed two popular collaboration solutions and how they can benefit businesses of all sizes, across a host of vertical markets.

The first is Cisco Jabber, an enterprise application that works on Android (News - Alert), iOS, Mac and Windows. Jabber lets users access presence, IM, voice, video, video messaging, desktop sharing and conferencing, offering real-time collaboration capabilities. Born of Cisco’s (News - Alert) 2008 acquisition of Jabber XCP, the solution acts as a soft phone offering HD video and desktop sharing capabilities. It works with Cisco’s Unified Communications (News - Alert) Manager to provide call control and secure and reliable collaboration and communications. Jabber is also integrated with Microsoft Office, enabling users to check other workers’ availability and initiate communications directly through Office apps.

The Cisco Spark solution is touted as a full collaboration suite more suitable for teams. It enables users to meet virtually as well as message, call, whiteboard and share. The offering includes the Cisco Spark Board, a touch screen that lets users draw, whiteboard and edit for next-level collaboration. Spark was born of Cisco’s acquisition of WebEx, through which it developed the Project Squared collaboration tool. That was rebranded as Spark two years ago, and marketed as a centralized communications and collaboration console. The offering was also designed to work with customers’ existing UC tools and codecs, making it both highly flexible and easy to integrate.

Of course, Cisco’s offerings represent only a small sampling of the myriad collaboration tools available for today’s businesses. And MarketsandMarkets finds that the cloud deployment model is also becoming increasingly popular for enterprise collaboration, as it decreases infrastructure and maintenance costs significantly. Regardless of the chosen solution, collaboration tools are being deployed at an astounding rate thanks to their numerous benefits and efficiencies.

If you’d like to learn more about real time, be sure to check out TMC (News - Alert) and Crossfire Media’s newest conference and expo, Communications 20/20, happening July 18-20 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The event will focus on the next wave of technology and innovations that will transcend the importance of person to person contact, disrupting the future of the entire communications industry. Find out more HERE.