Apple and Cisco Systems in August of 2015 announced they had joined forces to give business users of iOS devices the best possible experience on Cisco-powered networks. This week Apple (News - Alert) introduced the CallKit API, which employs Cisco’s Spark and new iOS 10 features to unify cellular and VoIP calling for iPhone users.
Jonathan Rosenberg in a new Cisco blog writes about how much people rely on their iPhones – even for work. Yet he notes that most people don’t use special apps for business calls although such apps can deliver a superior experience via the use of wideband speech codecs like Opus for clearer calls, and the ability for users to move a call from one device to another.
Meanwhile, mobile calling apps can benefit businesses with savings because they can leverage campus Wi-Fi networks for lower cost international calls. Compliance and security are additional benefits, he noted.
“Yet, despite all of these benefits, people still use the native dialer instead of VoIP apps. Why?” Rosenberg asks. “Because the native phone app is universal – allowing them to call and be called by anyone, not just work contacts.”
He adds that now the Apple-Cisco (News - Alert) integration allows people to keep employing the iPhone the way they are used to doing that – via the native phone app – but with Cisco Spark handling the calls. That, he says, enables VoIP calls to have the same call waiting and incoming call experiences as cellular calls.
Cisco Spark, by the way, is a cloud-based collaboration service that works on whatever device you work on – be it a cell phone, a connected computer, a deskphone, or a videoconferencing system.
As Jon Arnold wrote back in December of 2015: “Kudos to Cisco for taking a bottom-up approach to redefine the solution around a problem set that decision-makers can understand. Nobody has really cracked the code yet, but based on what we saw last week, I think Cisco has come the closest so far. Rowan [Trollope] rightly noted that two key UC building blocks – telephony and video – were designed pre-mobility and pre-Internet, and that just won’t cut it for today’s collaboration needs…. So, they’ve re-designed these as part of Spark Service for the cloud and from the cloud, and when you start like this from a clean slate you’re already ahead of the pack.”
Apple has new deals in place also with IBM (News - Alert) and SAP in an apparent move to expand its strength in the enterprise business arena
Edited by Alicia Young