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Cisco Makes Video Conferencing More Cost-Effective for SMB and Mid-Market Customers
| Nov 3, 2011 | Unified Communications and Contact Center
| Analyst: Brian Riggs
Event Summary
November 2, 2011 -- Cisco enhanced its Business Edition 3000 and Business Edition 6000 systems for SMBs and the mid-market. New features include support for WiFi handsets, corporate instant messaging, video conferencing, SIP trunks, WebEx Connect, and Jabber. In addition, localization has been expanded to the UK, Spain, Italy, and France. The new functions are scheduled to be available this month. Expected customer pricing for the Cisco Business Edition 3000 starts at $100/user for a 100-user system, while Business Edition 6000 pricing starts at $158/user for a 225-user system. Last week, Cisco also announced Callway, a cloud-based video conferencing service targeted at SMBs. The service is available immediately and costs $99 to $149 per month.
Quick Take
Analytical Summary
• Current Perspective: Moderate on Cisco’s Business Edition and Callway announcements, because they help make rather advanced communications capabilities, such as corporate instant messaging and high-definition video conferencing, more readily available to small and mid-sized businesses.
• Vendor Importance: Moderate to Cisco, because the enhancements to Business Edition deliver incremental improvements to a new and generally immature set of products that have yet to establish themselves in the market. Meanwhile, the introduction of Callway marks Cisco’s continued attempts to build a set of cloud-based communications services that do not directly compete with those offered by its many service provider partners worldwide.
• Market Importance: Low on the mid-market and SMB communications solutions market, because Business Edition remains a new and comparatively immature communications platform. Resellers are unlikely to find that the recent enhancements make it significantly more attractive to prospects in the SMB and mid-market space. In addition, while Callway will directly impact specific competitors such as LifeSize, other Cisco competitors in the communications market, as well as service provider partners, are unlikely to be overly affected by the move.
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Cisco Reduces Cost and Complexity of IP Telephony Systems While Adding Video, Instant Messaging and Presence Features Purpose-Built for Midsize Businesses
Rich Heritage in Unified Communications Enables Cisco to Deliver Enterprise-Grade Collaboration Functionality While Maintaining Simplicity and Low Cost
SAN JOSE, CA, Nov 02, 2011 -- Building on its expertise in unified communications (UC), Cisco CSCO +1.08% announced today a series of advancements that can give midsize businesses access to "enterprise grade" IP phone systems with integrated collaboration capabilities without taxing already constrained IT and financial resources.
Cisco introduced innovations to the Cisco(R) Business Edition 3000 and the Cisco Business Edition 6000 (formerly known as the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Business Edition 3000 and 6000 respectively). Through these innovations, midsize customers can now access collaboration offerings -- ranging from rich video to instant messaging (IM) to presence -- at price points attractive to the cost-sensitive market. Additionally, these solutions are simple to use, configure and support. The Cisco Business Edition family, together with Cisco WebEx(R) and Cisco TelePresence(R) for small and medium-sized businesses announced last week, provide a complete portfolio of capabilities for mid-size organizations.
Currently, most mid-size organizations operate aging public branch exchange (PBX) systems and old telephony applications -- even though these systems scale poorly, are increasingly expensive to maintain, and fail to meet today's business and mobility needs. While IP telephony systems offer distinct performance and efficiency benefits, many have held on to the old technology thinking that IP-based systems are beyond their budget and IT skill level.
With this announcement, Cisco is debunking the myth that IP telephony is out of the price range of mid-sized businesses by making available systems for as little as $100 per user for a 100-person organization while also including functionality that allows smaller shops to harness the power of business-changing unified communications solutions.
Additional Details:
New in the Cisco Business Edition 3000 (focused on companies with 75 to 200 users)
-- Reduced costs and increased flexibility for PSTN connectivity: The Cisco Business Edition 3000 includes integration of key features such as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) trunking via the Cisco Unified Border Element. Now mid-size businesses can save money by replacing costly traditional fixed public switched telephone network (PSTN) lines with PSTN connectivity via a SIP trunking service provider on the Internet.
-- Powerful flexibility to virtually meet clients, suppliers and partners, anywhere, anytime: Customers also can benefit from integration with the Cisco WebEx web conferencing solution. With this, employees can plan or initiate ad hoc meetings with other co-workers or third parties while taking advantage of full document sharing.
-- Enterprise-class open standards platform for IM and presence now for mid-sized businesses: Customers can enjoy seamless integration with Cisco Jabber(TM) for IM and presence. Delivered through the Cisco Collaboration Cloud, Cisco Jabber provides a single, consistent experience allowing business workers to easily and securely find the right people, see if and how they are available, and collaborate using their preferred method -- be it presence, IM, voice and video, voice messaging, desktop sharing, web conferencing or audio.
-- Video as easy as voice: Now, placing a video call as easy as placing a voice call. Utilizing the Cisco Unified IP Phones 8941 and 8945, workers simply dial a regular phone number and the participants see one another on their respective devices. This enables small and midsize businesses to reap the benefits of video collaboration -- including the ability to see non verbal cues -- at a very cost effective entry price.
-- Country compatibility out of the box: To enable simple and rapid set-up, new country-specific dial plans are now available for the US, Canada, China, India, Russia and Australia; dial plans for the UK, France, Spain and Italy will be available in the first quarter of CY 2012. User and administrator interfaces are also presented in localized languages.
-- Simple and powerful tools for customer call handling: On aging PBX systems, many calls are dropped or routed incorrectly, leading to reduced productivity and customer frustration. The Cisco Unified IP Phone 8961 integrates with the Cisco Unified Attendant Console Compact Edition. The new attendant console application greatly streamlines the operator's ability to route calls and ensure customers are connected with the right internal resource.
New to the Cisco Business Edition 6000 (focused on companies with 150 to 750 users)
-- Reduced complexity by integrating cloud-based offers. Cisco has integrated Cisco WebEx Meeting Center and Cisco Jabber for IM and presence into the Cisco Business Edition 6000. This eases the provisioning of these applications as web conferencing becomes the default way to connect people in remote offices, and cloud becomes the preferred method of delivery, since it saves money and reduces management complexity.
-- Reduced costs via embedded virtualization software: The Cisco Business Edition 6000 already addressed midmarket needs to control costs by virtualizing applications that enable the system to provide everything from voice messaging to call control. In this release, Cisco takes it a step further by embedding the virtualization software required to operate those virtualized applications. This advancement helps customers save money by reducing virtualization software acquisition costs as well as ongoing maintenance fees.
-- Lower user limits: While the Cisco Business Edition 6000 is geared towards companies with 150 to 750 users, Cisco recognizes that it may be attractive to companies with a smaller number of users, especially ones that anticipate substantial growth. Consequently, the lower limit for the Cisco Business Edition 6000 is now 50 users (formerly 100). Larger companies will also find this change attractive since many of these organizations are looking for a powerful system to implement in branch offices or subsidiaries that's independent from the main system but is still networked back to the headquarter offices.
Pricing, Availability
-- Availability: New functionality announced today is scheduled to be available November 2011.
-- Pricing: Expected customer pricing for the Cisco Business Edition 3000 starts at $100/user for a 100-user system; for the Cisco Business Edition 6000 pricing starts at $158/user for a 225-user system.
Cisco Redefines TelePresence: Delivers In-Person Experiences to All
On 5th Anniversary of Cisco TelePresence, Company Showcases How the Technology Is Enabling Companies of All Sizes to Benefit from the Power of In-Person Collaboration
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Oct. 26, 2011 – Just five years ago, Cisco introduced Cisco TelePresence ® technology, which delivered a video experience so intuitive, so lifelike and natural that it felt as if people were in the same room even when they were miles apart. But what started out as a way to save travel costs and optimize employee time at large companies has evolved into a way of accelerating time to market, expanding access to experts and transforming how companies do business. Today, Cisco is introducing new and expanded offerings -- from value-priced endpoints to a HD video software client to a hosted solution that are designed specifically to make the TelePresence experience available to everyone, everywhere, including small and medium-sized businesses.
Today's announcements highlight how Cisco is delivering people-centric collaboration to more individuals and businesses around the world. Cisco is also expanding the community of users that can share in-person experiences with co-workers, customers and suppliers in the following ways:
• Extending Cisco TelePresence solutions to companies of all sizes
• Driving TelePresence solutions from the boardroom to the desktop and beyond
• Expanding TelePresence technology beyond just meetings
Extending Cisco TelePresence Solutions to Companies of All Sizes
Smaller businesses typically need technology solutions that don't require a large capital outlay and can be installed and managed without a lot of IT oversight. To address this need, Cisco is introducing Cisco TelePresence for small and medium-sized business. With this offer, customers can purchase or lease, select multipurpose and personal endpoints and connect those endpoints to a hosted service called Cisco TelePresence Callway, part of the Cisco Collaboration Cloud. The hosted service reduces the complexity and costs with TelePresence which have been hurdles to adoption for smaller businesses in the past.
The Callway service is managed by Cisco and sold through Cisco Authorized Partners. Callway subscriptions start at $99 per month and include unlimited calls to any TelePresence endpoint as well as to any standards-based video device from third parties over the Internet. Multi-party bridging capabilities for up to 12 participants are also available.
This offer, combined with industry leading on-premises infrastructure and trusted partnerships with 14 service providers delivering hosted TelePresence offerings, fully enables Cisco to deliver TelePresence solutions to companies of all sizes. Callway is commercially available in the United States.
