Ensure Interoperability, Introduce New Capabilities, and Break Down Boundaries to Improve Collaboration

Business today increasingly requires interactions among companies, including partners and suppliers. The people you work with may be spread across time zones, sometimes even globally, and you may never meet many of them face to face.

Information from these interactions is hard to prioritize and process; it comes in constantly from many sources, from email, texts, blogs, and video to voicemail, and through many devices: laptops, desk phones, cell phones.

A well-defined collaboration architecture connects multiple decision makers in multiple locations across multiple networks to improve and accelerate interactions among people, allowing teams to form more quickly and find the information that is relevant to them faster.

Launch Interactive Flash

Launch Collaboration Architecture Interactive Flash

The Cisco Collaboration Architecture ensures interoperability between existing and new forms of communication and collaboration technologies, further enabling both structured and ad-hoc business processes. Individual components can be implemented on-site leveraging existing infrastructure; they may be offered as hosted software-as-a-service solutions, or deployed as a combination of the two. It comprises the following layers:

• Network Services: help ensure end-user quality of experience by providing the foundation for network-enabled collaboration
• Medianet Services: optimize video and other forms of rich, interactive media
• Collaboration Services: streamline collaboration and break down application silos with open, secure, reusable capabilities
• Client Services: provide programmatic access to collaboration services for custom development and integration with legacy environments
• Collaboration Applications: streamline workflow and optimize decision making with software and purpose-built hardware that facilitates robust communications
• Devices: provide freedom and flexibility in accessing collaboration tools and services by allowing teams to work in the manner that suits them best

Two vertical stripes offer capabilities that span all layers:

• Security Services: protect all layers of the architecture from constantly evolving threats
• Management Services: streamline management across operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning