In the age of BYOD, when IT managers are keen on "collaboration-enabling" their employees both in the office and on-the-go, communications giant Cisco (News - Alert) has created Cisco Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) Release 9.0 to make enterprise-wide collaboration more efficient and cost-effective.
As part of its new release, Cisco introduces a bevy of new services and capabilities to its Unified Communications Manager platform. Designed to help IT managers directly address many of today’s key challenges relating to team collaboration, the Cisco UC Release 9.0 provides the foundation of a unified collaboration strategy, Cisco clarified in a press release.
Cisco UC Release 9.0 comes with several key advancements. Recognizing the employees’ needs for global access to Cisco's UC environment – even if those employees are not using Cisco endpoints – Cisco Unified Communications Manager is equipped with an Extend and Connect feature to support third-party endpoints, providing businesses a cost-effective way to give employees access to the Cisco UC environment by allowing any vendor phone – old or new, analog, digital or IP – to be controlled by Cisco Jabber.
The Extend and Connect feature works with Cisco Jabber, and is designed to bring any third-party phone into the Cisco UC environment. This facility can be used by telecommunters and travelers at hotels, airports, convention centers, or even places like offshore oil rigs or cruise ships sailing half way around the world.
With Extend and Connect, telecommuters only need to input the phone number of their preferred voice device into a Jabber client running on their Windows PC, and Cisco Unified Communications Manager will route all voice traffic directly to that phone number.
This allows workers to use any third-party phone while getting the experience of using a full-featured enterprise phone; they can enjoy all the communications services they have at the office while they're on the road, such as presence, IM and click-to-call. Furthermore, Extend and Connect maintains excellent voice quality at all times without being dependent upon the quality of the broadband link.
Support of fixed mobile convergence gives users of any type of mobile phone access to more desk-phone-like features – anywhere, anytime – without the need of a smartphone, data plan, or mobile client installed on the phone. Enterprise-grade telephony features such as unified inbox, message waiting, callback, conferencing and direct-extension dialing are now available via a new systems interface that ties Cisco Unified Communications Manager with the user's mobile service provider, providing transparency, intelligence, and control beyond the realm of the user's office.
With the increasing rise of video in IT departments, the new version of Cisco Unified Communications Manager is stocked with high video quality, security, and usability improvements, and the new release delivers support for additional video endpoints. The recently announced Cisco TelePresence TX9000 joins other telepresence endpoints (including C-Series codecs and SX, MX, EX, VX, Profile, 3000, 1300, 1100 and 500 Series) that are also registered to and managed by Cisco Unified Communications Manager.
In its enhanced version, Cisco Unified Communications Manager incorporates next-generation "dial by email" feature. Also known as "Uniform Resource Identifier" (URI) dialing, this feature allows users to reach any endpoint in the system by dialing a contact's email address in lieu of a traditional phone number.
In order to facilitate enhanced customer collaboration, Cisco UC Release 9.0 contains many features that help businesses implement and manage contact center solutions. Key elements include packaged contact center enterprise, precision routing for Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise, and multiple enhancements to Cisco Unified Contact Center Express.
Among additional features that enhance management and usability, there is a native call queuing capability to put in-bound callers and groups of callers automatically on hold and properly routed into a queue by providing custom greetings and announcements.
Furthermore, via Cisco UC Release 9.0, Cisco introduces user-centric licensing throughout its entire collaboration portfolio. Now, businesses can purchase licenses based on four distinct types of workers: deskless (roaming) workers, desk-bound workers, occasionally mobile workers and road warriors.
Cisco is announcing Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing Premium Edition to address the growing mobile workforce by adding mobility solutions (like Cisco Jabber Mobile) to the collaboration mix. This builds on the Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing program launched four years ago, helping businesses purchase Cisco Unified Communications software licenses simply, flexibly and economically. The solutions have become widely adopted and reached nearly 10 million users worldwide in May 2012 alone.
Cisco UC Release 9.0 is scheduled for a market release in the Q3 CY 2012. Extend and Connect, one of the many key advancements, requires both UC Release 9.0 as well as Cisco Jabber 9.1. Cisco Jabber 9.1 is scheduled to be available in Q4 CY 2012.
In other news Cisco announced the availability of Cisco Connect Cloud, a software platform for Linksys (News - Alert) Smart Wi-Fi Routers that redefines and dramatically simplifies how consumers connect, control and interact with their connected devices, including personal entertainment and home appliances. Cisco Connect Cloud is designed to handle all the tiresome and complicated technical aspects of home network set-up and connecting devices to the network. This enables the average person to get on with using and enjoying their Internet service, as well as a wide range of new uses enabled by the home network.
8x8 Inc. is a Platinum sponsor of ITEXPO West 2012. To be held Oct. 2-5 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Visit AudioCodes (News - Alert) in booth #808. For more information on ITEXPO West 2012 click here.
Edited by Allison Boccamazzo