Cisco and EMC Take “Three Paths to the Cloud” Strategy to the Next Level

EMC Press Release

Cisco and EMC Take “Three Paths to the Cloud” Strategy to the Next Level

New Joint Reference Architectures, Aligned Channel Incentives and Integrated Customer Support Accelerate VSPEX Momentum New Offerings Support VCE Vblock in Delivering Customers Unmatched Cloud Infrastructure Choice and Flexibility

VMworld – San Francisco, CA - August 28, 2012

Cisco and EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced further collaboration to help accelerate IT transformation by providing customers with unrivaled choice and flexibility via "three paths to the cloud" — custom-design infrastructure, validated reference architectures, and pre-integrated converged infrastructure. Cisco® and EMC® introduced new joint reference architectures, aligned channel partner incentives, and integrated customer support to speed customers' path to the cloud.

Building on a decade-long partnership, Cisco and EMC now provide enterprise and service provider customers with an unmatched menu of options to build cloud infrastructure. The "three paths to the cloud" include:

• Implement a custom-designed infrastructure with best-of-breed products
• Install validated, easy-to-deploy reference architectures with Cisco solutions for EMC VSPEX™ Proven Infrastructure
• Purchase a pre-integrated converged infrastructure with VCE™ Vblock™ System.

Partnership Highlights:

• The two new Cisco® Validated Designs (CVD) for EMC VSPEX are unified computing reference architectures tailored to SMB and mid-market customers. Designed to accelerate the journey to the private cloud, the CVDs are Cisco Solutions for EMC VSPEX for Microsoft Hyper-V Architectures andCisco Solutions for EMC VSPEX for VMware vSphere 5.0 Architectures.
• More than 200 Cisco and EMC Velocity™ channel partners within the global VSPEX community have been trained to resell and deploy EMC VSPEX with Cisco Unified Data Center.
• Cisco and EMC have also aligned their channel incentive structures to simplify the process of accruing incentives and boost partner profitability.
• Cisco and EMC have implemented a customer support framework for VSPEX for collaborative case management.
• VCE — Cisco and EMC's joint venture with VMware — pioneered a groundbreaking integrated data center offering with end-to-end vendor visibility, enabling the leading time-to-market and one of the lowest TCO for converged cloud infrastructure.
• VCE's fully productized converged infrastructure standardizes processes and life cycle management to significantly improve application availability and enable VCE's unique seamless support experience.
• VCE continues to gain traction in enterprise data centers as well as in cloud service providers with hundreds of VCE Vblock Systems in production at mission-critical data centers worldwide.
• VCE demand continues its strong growth in the most recent fiscal quarter and remains on track to reach a $1 billion revenue run rate.

Customer Quotes:

Rajinder Gill, Group Finance Director, Minor, Weir & Willis Ltd

"Our business needed a complete network and infrastructure upgrade in order to implement a new ERP system. VSPEX was an obvious fit for our environment and working closely with Synapse, we reduced our deployment and integration time. The prior validation work performed by Cisco, EMC and Synapse on VSPEX reduced our risk and complexity. Because of the tight integration between EMC, Cisco and VSPEX, we have decided to leverage the VSPEX platform as the primary core of our network and infrastructure for all current and future applications."

Rob Walters, Vice President, Product Management, SunGard Availability Service

"As a service provider we want our development teams working on value-added services that differentiate our offerings in the marketplace, rather than integrating best of breed infrastructure components. Vblock helps us to do that successfully for our multi-tenant enterprise cloud, and the VSPEX reference architectures will make the process of delivering tailored solutions to our customers’ private cloud needs much easier. The collaborative support framework that is part of VSPEX is particularly critical, as it will avoid the difficulties so often encountered with multi-vendor solutions."

Channel Partner Quotes:

Joe Coxon, Business Development Manager, Synapse

"Many of the customers we work with want to deploy a cloud, but aren't quite sure how to do so quickly and easily. VSPEX is a powerful solution that helps us deploy clouds for our customers quickly and efficiently. By leveraging our expert understanding of client requirements, and Cisco's and EMC's industry-leading technologies, we can deliver a complete solution that matches our customers' business needs."

Dave Hart, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Presidio

"We deliver the ultimate in choice and flexibility to our customers by offering solutions based on EMC and Cisco technologies. We're seeing a lot of demand for Vblock Systems with larger enterprise and service provider customers and VSPEX configurations allow us to reach a broader market. Both enable us to provide our unique expertise and differentiated value to help customers meet their business requirements."

Cisco Quote:

Rick Snyder, Vice President, Global and Strategic Partners, Cisco

"Cisco and EMC partner every day in the engineering labs and in the field, helping customers around the world transform their data centers and strengthen their business. Through VCE we've unleashed market-moving innovation through the pre-engineered, pre-integrated Vblock Systems. Now, we're working together to meet customer demand with Cisco Validated Designs for EMC VSPEX and aligned channel incentives to accelerate VSPEX adoption."

EMC Quote:

Josh Kahn, Vice President, Solutions Marketing, EMC Corporation

"VCE enables customers to standardize on a converged infrastructure solution, dramatically accelerating their journey to the cloud. We are very pleased with VCE's momentum and the benefits it is delivering to customers around the world. Building upon this, we are very excited to accelerate our partnership with Cisco on VSPEX to address market requirements for best-of-breed reference architectures offered exclusively via the channel. Channel partners are seeking solutions that reduce complexity and simplify the deployment for their customers."

Additional Resources:

Related Links

• Cisco Solution for EMC VSPEX for Microsoft Hyper-V Architectures
• Cisco Solution for EMC VSPEX for VMware vSphere 5.0 Architectures
• Learn more about EMC VSPEX
• Learn more about Vblock Systems

Follow Cisco Online:

• Connect with Cisco via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn.
• Join the Cisco Worldwide Channels conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and Cisco Channels Blog
• Follow @VCE on Twitter

Follow EMC at VMworld:

• EMC Community Network: To view everything EMC at VMworld, visithttps://community.emc.com/go/vmworld
• Twitter: For continuous news and event updates for EMC at VMworld, follow EMC on Twitter at@CloudEMC and @EMCCorp and join the conversations using #EMC and #VMworld, as well as #EMCChannel and #VSPEX.
• Facebook: To view highlight videos, interviews and more, like EMC on Facebook
• Flickr: View photos of EMC at VMworld on Flickr and tag your VMworld photos with "EMC and VMworld"

About Cisco

Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

About EMC

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

New EMC VNXe3150 Unified Storage Solution Available Worldwide

EMC Press Release

New EMC VNXe3150 Unified Storage Solution Available Worldwide

Latest VNXe Offering Extends Support for Private Clouds; Offers 50% more Performance and Capacity per Rack Unit

HOPKINTON, MA - August 21, 2012

News Summary:

• EMC's® VNXe3150®, first announced at EMC World 2012, is now generally available worldwide.
• In addition to being a key entry-level storage solution, VNXe3150 is the anchor unified storage platform in EMC VSPEX™ Proven Infrastructure solutions for Citrix® XenServer™, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere™. It is designed to support virtualization of up to 50 servers with heightened simplicity, efficiency and flexibility.
• The VNXe3150 delivers 50% more performance and capacity per rack unit for maximized TCO and ROI benefits.

Full Story:

EMC's VNXe3150 unified storage system, combining 50% more performance and capacity per rack unit with the simplicity for which the award-winning VNXe® line is known, is now generally available worldwide. Fully optimized for virtualization, VNXe3150 retains its industry-leading simplicity for IT generalists in small to medium-sized businesses, as well as departments in enterprises and government. The VNXe3150 delivers these new capabilities, and more, at sub-$10K entry level list pricing.

With the availability of the VNXe3150, entry-level storage customers can maximize their virtual environments with added performance and capacity. VNXe3150 supports the move to a virtualized environment through integrations with Citrix XENServer, Microsoft Hyper V and VMware vSphere, providing support in any hypervisor environment. Additionally, VNXe3150 is a key component of EMC's VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, which offers a wide range of choices for industry-leading virtualization, server, network, storage and data protection for EMC customers. The VNXe3150 also features ease of use with EMC's industry-acclaimed Unisphere® storage management interface.

Even an hour of downtime can have a catastrophic impact on today's businesses — but 100% uptime can come with a hefty price tag, viewed as a necessary operational cost. By leveraging VNXe3150 in virtualized environments, customers can minimize downtime while achieving significant power cost savings and enjoying simplified management, ultimately benefitting the bottom line.

VNXe3150 is sold exclusively through EMC's Velocity™ Partner Program.

Customer Quote:

Christopher Bakke, Director of Information Technology, Kahler Slater

"At Kahler Slater, our approach to storage is all about getting the best product and technology at the right price. Our business is architecture, which generates many large, storage-hungry files. We needed a storage solution capable of meeting physical space constraints and offering services to facilitate efficient use of storage capacity — ensuring performance, virtualization support, ease of use and scalability. EMC's VNXe3150 hit the mark, and its commitment to extending the VNXe family while retaining SMB-sensitive pricing mean that the VNXe will be on our radar as we continue to grow."

Channel Partner Quote:

Joe Burke, Vice President of the North American Enterprise Security, Virtualization and Networking Group, Enterprise Computing Solutions, Arrow Electronics

"EMC's focus on enhancing the VNXe entry-level storage platform is a commitment to continue driving value to its channel partners. The added power in the VNXe3150 directly results in better performance, higher efficiencies and lower operating costs, at affordable pricing levels — just what customers need in today's entry-level storage environments. EMC remains a key partner for Arrow, and our robust joint customer base reaps the benefits of this relationship every day."

EMC Quote:

Eric Herzog, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Product Marketing, EMC Unified Storage Division

"EMC is dedicated to providing entry-level products that enable our customers to solve real business problems. With the VNXe3150, we're turbo charging the VNXe line with performance and efficiency—without compromising the simplicity that our customers count on. Especially in today's era of virtualized environments, it's critical that storage solutions deliver capacity plus scalability, reliability and ease of use, and that's what customers get with the latest addition to the VNXe series."

Additional Resources:

• Read the VNXe Series Specification Sheet
• Read the VNXe Series Data Sheet
• View the VNXe Customer Video Montage
• Read the "VNXe3150: Winning Storage Simplicity," Mesabi Group
• View the VSPEX Whiteboard Video

About EMC

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing.  Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

Mitel, Vidyo and VMware to Unveil Unified Communications Enabled Telepresence with VMware View®

Press release:

VMware News Releases

Mitel, Vidyo and VMware to Unveil Unified Communications Enabled Telepresence with VMware View®

Live Demonstration at VMworld® 2012 Booths # 2512 and 2530

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – August 21, 2012 —Mitel, Vidyo, Inc., and VMware today jointly unveiled a new, integrated solution combining UCC and video conferencing with VMware View®. Specifically, Mitel and Vidyo have integrated Mitel’s virtualized Unified Communicator® (UC) Advanced client software and the VidyoConferencing™ collaboration solution with VMware View to deliver a single, unified solution that enables collaboration over any medium while delivering reduced costs, increased security and simplified management of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

Desktop virtualization using VMware View offers IT tremendous benefits by moving desktops and applications into the cloud and delivering them as a managed service. This enables process automation efficiency, increased security and reduction in the total cost of desktop ownership. This joint solution will enable IT to deliver video conferencing, voice, presence, secure instant messaging, audio and web conferencing, document sharing, voice messaging and email, all unified with complete desktop functionality. Users simply sign on once to a terminal or use their VMware View client to instantly gain access to all collaboration mediums in addition to their desktops. 

“Video is an obvious next step in VDI applications, and this joint solution demonstrates the continuing leadership of VMware and its strong partner ecosystem,” said Charles King, analyst at Pund-IT, Inc. “Solving the performance and resource issues related to voice in VDI solutions was hard enough. But the ability to deliver business-quality video in a virtualized environment requires overcoming significant technical hurdles, especially when you take an open approach versus the proprietary ‘walled garden’ products offered by some vendors. If the collaboration between Mitel, and Vidyo and VMware performs as we expect it to, the results will be groundbreaking.” 

The joint announcement made by VMware and Mitel at VMworld 2011 showcased a significant technical achievement— streaming virtualized voice to a virtual desktop without significant performance and latency issues. Today’s announcement represents a comparable technology breakthrough from Mitel, Vidyo and VMware to enable media streaming by separating communications into two pieces — the rich media component and the call-processing component that sets up the connections. The call-processing component is transmitted through the data center whereas the rich media component is transmitted directly to the endpoints, enabling the quality over existing networks without sacrificing performance in the data center.

“Mitel and Vidyo have demonstrated what is possible with a strong partner community. Both companies are committed to an open architectural approach, and this has enabled us to work together to achieve dramatic technical leaps that better serve our customers,” said Vittorio Viarengo, vice president, End-User Computing, VMware. “As evidenced by today’s announcement, we are continually pushing the bounds of what is possible with VDI and VMware View®.” 

"This development allows us to deliver yet another important collaboration mode for virtualized UCC deployments," said Stephen Beamish, vice president, Business Development, Mitel. "It's further validation of the power and flexibility that enterprise voice virtualization provides for end customers."

Interested parties can view a live demo of the joint solution at VMworld 2012 in booths #2512 and 2530 VMworld 2012 is taking place at San Francisco’s Moscone Center Aug. 26-30.  Mitel will also participate in a series of international VMware events this fall including VMworld Europe in Barcelona, VMware Solutions Symposiums in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, and VMware Forum in Singapore and Australia.

Additional Resources

• VMware Twitter: @VMwareEvents (hashtag #vmwarecloud)
• Vidyo Twitter: @Vidyo
• Vidyo blog: www.vidyo.com/blog
• Twitter: @VMwareEvents (hashtag #vmwarecloud), @Mitel
• VMworld and Mitel Blogs: http://www.vmworld.com/blogs/vmworld; www.mitel.com/mitelfreedom

About Mitel
Mitel (NASDAQ: MITL; TSX: MNW) is a global provider of business communications and collaboration software and services. Mitel's Freedom architecture provides the flexibility and simplicity organizations need to support today's dynamic work environment. Through a single cloud-ready software stream, Mitel delivers a powerful suite of advanced communications and collaboration capabilities that provides freedom from walled garden architectures and enables organizations to implement best-of-breed solutions on any network; extends the "in-office" experience anywhere, on any device; and offers choice of commercial options to fit business needs. For more information visit: http://www.mitel.com

Mitel and the Mitel logo are registered trademarks of Mitel Networks Corporation.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

MITL-C

About VMware

VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2011 revenues of $3.77 billion, VMware has more than 350,000 customers and 50,000 partners.  The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

VMware, VMware View and VMworld are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective organizations. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

About Vidyo, Inc.
Vidyo, Inc. pioneered Personal Telepresence enabling natural, HD multi-point videoconferences on tablets and smart phones, PCs and Macs, room systems, gateways that interoperate with H.323 and SIP endpoints, telepresence solutions and affordable cloud-based broadcast solutions. Learn more at www.vidyo.com, on the Blog or follow @vidyo on Twitter.

Schools Pass Debt to the Next Generation

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Friday, August 17, 2012

Schools Pass Debt to the Next Generation

By FLOYD NORRIS

The deleveraging of America is well under way, as individuals and companies recover from the excess borrowing that helped to produce the boom and left many people vulnerable when the bust arrived. Household debt is down nearly $900 billion over the last four years, partly from repayments and partly from defaults.

During the crazy times, homeowners could get mortgages that allowed them to pay less than the full amount of interest being charged, with the rest added to the principal. Commercial property owners generally paid the full amount of interest, but did not have to repay any principal until the loan matured in five or 10 years. For both homes and commercial properties, lenders were willing to rely on extremely optimistic appraisals.

For property buyers, those days are gone,

But for some borrowers, it is still possible to borrow now and pay nothing for decades.

There is a furor in California because the Poway Unified School District, in San Diego County, borrowed money last year on terms that even Countrywide would have laughed at during the boom. It will not pay a dime of interest or principal for more than two decades. Only then will it begin to service the bonds.

It is paying a high price. Although it has a good credit rating — Aa2 at Moody’s and AA– at Standard & Poor’s — it will eventually pay tax-exempt interest of up to 6.8 percent for the borrowings. When it issued more conventional bonds last year, it paid rates that were much lower, ranging up to just 4.1 percent.

For borrowing $105 million in 2011, taxpayers — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the children and grandchildren of today’s taxpayers — will pay $877 million in interest between 2033 and 2051.

For more, visit www.nytimes.com.

Press release:

PRESS RELEASE

University of Bern and ifolor opt for highly scalable servers with Cisco UCS

• Cisco already has more than 200 UCS customers in Switzerland • UCS servers provision resources quickly and flexibly • Centralized management reduces overall operating costs

Switzerland, August 10th 2012 – An increasing number of companies are turning to Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) servers. Launched two years ago, Cisco UCS now has more than 11,000 customers worldwide. At the end of last year, Cisco secured Kreuzlingen-based photography and print service provider ifolor as its 100th UCS customer in Switzerland and named the University of Bern as its 150th UCS customer soon afterward, at the beginning of March this year. Since then, the total number of Cisco UCS customers in Switzerland has reached more than 200.

University of Bern benefits from centralized management

The University of Bern relies on Cisco UCS servers to handle rapidly growing data volumes. The servers were installed within three days, with assistance from Netcloud, a Cisco Gold Certified Partner, and offer the following advantages:

• Quick installation and intuitive control with no training costs
• Optimized operating costs due to simplified administration
• Scientific projects accelerated through centralized management

Using Cisco UCS, 124 virtual machines on six physical servers store data from the university's 40 institutes and research groups. The virtual machines provide 18 terabytes (TB) of storage space and 1.5 TB of memory. All of the system's components are coordinated with virtualization solutions from VMware and storage from Hitachi Data Systems. Simon Stähelin, virtualization manager at the University of Bern, praises the solution: "System operation is absolutely reliable, and it runs faster than our previous solutions. We're particularly impressed with the centralized management, which significantly simplifies administration."

ifolor handles large volumes of data with Cisco UCS

Customers of ifolor AG deliver the majority of their photos in digital format, which results in large and highly fluctuating volumes of data. Thanks to the Cisco solution, ifolor now has an efficient and stable infrastructure offering the following benefits:

• Flexible capacity scaling for seasonal peaks
• Online ordering services available at all times
• Images processed and stored quickly

ifolor utilizes two redundant Cisco UCS domains in two separate data centers. Each domain contains six Cisco UCS B230 M2 Blade servers with a total of 24 CPUs. The Cisco UCS servers enable the maximum possible stability for the network. Together with storage and data management from NetApp and virtualization solutions from VMware, they make up the FlexPod data center solution. The solution impressed Patrick Sontheim, head of infrastructure at ifolor AG: "The FlexPod architecture provides top performance and scaling with simple management. It allows images to be processed and stored quickly, and the online ordering service is available at all times," Christian Kupferschmid, CIO at ifolor, remarks and adds: "There were no problems with integration and we are still very satisfied with our decision for CISCO UCS."

Please click here for Cisco UCS pictures.

About Cisco

Cisco is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news please go tohttp://newsroom.cisco.com. Cisco equipment in Europe is provided by Cisco Systems International B.V. and Cisco International Limited, wholly owned subsidiaries of Cisco Systems, Inc.

# # #

Cisco Unveils Visual Collaboration Solutions in the Post-PC Era, Extending the Reach of TelePresence with New Mobile-to-Immersive Offerings

PRESS RELEASE

Cisco Unveils Visual Collaboration Solutions in the Post-PC Era, Extending the Reach of TelePresence with New Mobile-to-Immersive Offerings

New Immersive Room System Transforms How TelePresence Can be Used in High-Impact Meetings; Integrates with New Jabber Releases for iPad, Windows

ORLANDO, FL – March 27, 2012 – At the Enterprise Connect trade show, Cisco today introduced new people-centric innovations aimed at making it easier for people to collaborate anywhere, anytime in the post-PC era. The innovations, ranging from new desktop and mobile Cisco Jabber™  collaboration applications to Cisco TelePresence® systems, make it easy for users to move from one collaboration solution to the next based on how they work and their immediate task at hand (for example, moving from instant messaging to voice to video with the click of a button). The new Jabber and TelePresence offerings, which include a new immersive TelePresence system with optimized collaboration capabilities, are completely integrated, giving customers more mobility options while also extending the reach of their telepresence investments. Cisco specifically announced:

·         Powerful tools to extend the reach of TelePresence. Cisco is extending Cisco Jabber to iPad and Windows, building on its extensive Jabber portfolio for Android, iOS, Mac, BlackBerry and Cisco Cius™ tablets. With this development, Cisco is enabling Jabber customers to collaborate from anywhere and across the most popular operating systems utilizing high definition video, voice, presence, instant messaging, desktop sharing, conferencing and visual voicemail. Cisco is also expanding native integration between Jabber and TelePresence, giving mobile users a way to initiate and connect into a TelePresence session whether in the office or on the go. 

·         A new three-screen immersive TelePresence platform. The Cisco TelePresence TX9000 Series delivers the highest quality video experience along with advanced collaboration capabilities*, further building on Cisco's wide array of TelePresence endpoints for customers of all sizes. The TX9000 integrates with collaboration tools like Cisco WebEx with One-Touch simplicity and is also designed to be interoperable with all standards-based endpoints from other vendors.

·         Numerous customer and partner use cases for visual collaboration. A variety of customers and partners across healthcare, financial services, and oil and gas industries are deploying Cisco collaboration solutions to increase productivity and enable their employees to work on their own terms.

These developments come at a time when people increasingly expect freedom of choice in how and where they work, and that includes having access to a variety of integrated collaboration solutions and interoperable endpoints–both hardware and software based. As a result, IT managers are looking to provide highly secure, enterprise-class options that enable employees to interact across a broad range of tools whether collaborating in dedicated immersive telepresence rooms or via PCs, Macs, tablets, or smart phones – and any standards-based endpoint within and between organizations.

These innovations also are occurring as the need for rich video solutions and mobility is burgeoning. According to Cisco's latest Visual Networking Index, globally, 3 trillion minutes or 6 million years of video content will cross the Internet each month in 2015 and by 2016, global mobile data traffic will reach 10.8 exabytes per month (130 exabytes annually); growing 18-fold from 2011 to 2016. By 2016, mobile video will represent 71 percent of all mobile data traffic.

Additional Announcement Details:

Extending the Reach of TelePresence from the Boardroom to the Desktop and Beyond

A little more than five years ago, Cisco drove the creation of TelePresence with the introduction of the first truly intuitive and lifelike, in-person video experience. Cisco is continuing to innovate with the newly designed three-screen TX9000 immersive system that is intended to combine the highest quality TelePresence experience with advanced collaboration and content sharing capabilities. The TX9000 builds on Cisco's broad portfolio of endpoints that extends from the boardroom to the desktop and beyond.

·         From Immersive Video to High-Intensity Collaboration

·         As the pace of business becomes more complex, the meetings that drive decisions are becoming more dynamic and data-centric, requiring multiple inputs for quick turns. These types of business-critical meetings range from brainstorming sessions to product engineering and design, acquisition integration, and crisis communication planning for globally distributed teams, require high-intensity collaboration capabilities that allow people to easily share and interact with content in TelePresence meetings in ways not previously possible. These advanced collaboration capabilities include sharing content on the main TelePresence screens, point and highlight capabilities, white boarding, moving content from screen to screen, and introducing data from multiple content sources*.

·         Advanced Cisco WebEx® integration enables one-button-to-push simplicity for scheduling and starting WebEx® and TelePresence integrated meetings with future capabilities to support adding WebEx ad hoc to any TelePresence call using the Cisco TelePresence Touch interface.

·         New Immersive TelePresence Benchmark

·         TX9000 boasts a new state of the art, sleek industrial design with modern look and premium finish.

·         Innovative camera configuration enhances eye-contact among participants while the technology and cameras blend seamlessly into the background.

·         The system is capable of supporting 1080p, 60 frames per second (fps) while data sharing capabilities support 1080p 30 fps.*

·         Easily start and manage meetings using the Cisco TelePresence Touch user interface with "one button to push" simplicity that provides a consistent experience across the entire Cisco collaboration product portfolio.

·         TX9000 can accommodate six users and the TX9200 comes with a second table that can seat up to 18 users.

·         Provides native interoperability support for SIP, BFCP, H.264 and Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP).

·         Reduced Cost of Ownership and Ease of Set Up

·         TX9000 requires 20 percent less bandwidth than its Cisco predecessor.

·         Significant improvements in ease of partner installation allowing start up in as quickly as two days

·         System does not require any additional specialized lighting or audio.

·         Deployment flexibility options for wall-mounted or free-standing light reflector.

·         Pricing and Availability

·         The TX9000 is targeted to begin shipping in the second quarter of calendar year 2012 with the advanced collaboration and content sharing features targeted for availability later in the calendar year.* List pricing in the United States starts at $299,000. Regional variations may apply.

Extending Cisco Jabber to iPad and Windows and More TelePresence Users

People require a work experience that travels with them, across location, device, and platform. Cisco Jabber releases for iPad and Windows deliver advanced collaboration capabilities to your preferred device.

·         Jabber for iPad:

·         Allows users to access high-quality video, voice, presence, instant messaging, conferencing, and visual voicemail capabilities on the iPad.

·         Jabber for iPad delivers a complete collaboration experience for mobile workers who need instant access to information and decision makers and want to choose when, where, and how they work.

·         Jabber for iPad delivers a standards-based experience built on the same high-quality video engine as Jabber Video for TelePresence and Jabber desktop applications. Jabber for iPad uses H264, XMPP and SIP.

·         Jabber for Windows:

·         A unified client – meaning an end user has one place to go to be able to access a range of communication and collaboration tools including high-definition video, voice, presence, IM (point to point, group, persistent chat) desktop sharing and web conferencing, and visual voicemail access.

·         Cisco Jabber for Windows features a highly intuitive user experience, allowing for point and click access to multiple forms of communication and seamless integration into Microsoft Office.

·         Cisco Jabber for Windows integrates an advanced engine to deliver HD video to the desktop. This technology uses extremely efficient, industry leading codecs and enables customers to use standards-based H.264 HD quality video with common dual-core processor computers while improving performance over lower bandwidth networks.

·         Jabber for Windows uses also XMPP, SIP and BFCP standards.

Cisco Jabber releases for Windows and iPad can be used with on-premises and cloud-based deployment options. Target availability for Jabber for Windows and Jabber for iPad is in the second quarter of calendar year 2012. Cisco Jabber for iPad, Jabber for Windows and related server software are included as part of Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing.

Supporting Quotes: 

William Moore, executive vice president / chief technology officer, CareCore National

With Cisco's video solutions, disparate groups – anybody in the organization as well as truly anybody external – can interact with us face-to-face through TelePresence or using WebEx conference, allowing for more efficient communication and improved collaboration from any location.  Cisco Jabber gives the flexibility in the method of communication, starting with presence and IM, extending its reach to a higher level of communication via desktop sharing, conferencing, and TelePresence sessions.  With these tools, we are able to provide an in-person experience internally as well as with customers and vendors, saving time and improving customer interaction."

Andy Dignan, senior manager unified communications, CDW

"Cisco Jabber is an effective tool for addressing the rapid proliferation of mobile devices in workplaces. Today, several of our solution architects use the Cisco Jabber client on Windows, Mac, Cius, and iPhone devices, and are excited about the new iPad client with HD video.  The Jabber Web plug-in augments the client offering letting us embed real-time unified communications and collaboration into our web-based portal to find product experts, see presence, and click to make voice and video calls in real-time. By embedding UC into our workflow, we're increasing productivity which helps us better serve our customers."

Mike Fitzgerald, managing director and head of information systems, Eagle Investment Systems

"Eagle has a highly mobile workforce across the globe. We are pioneering a high performance workplace that provides flexibility by enabling communications from laptops, tablets, and smart phones. With the Cisco Jabber and TelePresence operating from a common architecture, employees can use any of these devices and any operating systems for collaboration, which includes real-time communication methods to improve their productivity."

Steve Moloney, global network and security manager, McDermott

"McDermott uses Cisco Jabber to provide a unified experience across the company's desktops, tablets, and smart phones, to extend the reach of our TelePresence suite. We believe the adoption of Cisco TelePresence and UC technologies will improve the telecommunication facets to support our complex offshore oil and gas engineering, procurement, construction, and installation projects."

Emrah Aygun, IT infrastructure manager, Turkiye Is Bankasi

"We strive to provide our employees and customers with consistent communications capabilities and a uniform user experience, regardless of what device they are using. In the coming months, we intend to deploy Cisco Jabber to all our 23,000 bank employees—on PCs, Cisco Cius, iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry--to provide them with presence, instant messaging, voice, single number reach to mobile devices, unified messaging, WebEx meetings and TelePresence at their desk and on the go. This Cisco UC client deployment will be part of our "one vision" initiative for Turkiye Is Bankasi's future where our customers can communicate with their bank using different channels and locations, with the same service level throughout the nation."

Keld Jersild Olsen, chief executive officer, NetDesign

"As a long-time Cisco partner and early field trial account for the new Cisco TelePresence TX9000, we are excited to offer our customers the next generation immersive telepresence experience.  From the onset of immersive telepresence five years ago, it was about delivering the best face-to-face meeting experience in a controlled room environment where meeting participants felt as if they were in the same room, around the same table.  With the TX9000, Cisco is not only carrying the same robust feature set forward, but they are also delivering advanced collaboration tools which will provide the ultimate in-person meeting experience.  With its streamlined design, easier installation and innovative collaborative platform, the new TX9000 will strengthen our overall immersive telepresence portfolio and enable us to deliver a more compelling business transformation experience to our customers."
 

Torben Bonde chief information officer, Vestas

"We use TelePresence heavily, with two areas especially benefitting by it – our Turbines R&D department and our people development process. Vestas' Turbines R&D is the world´s biggest research and development department in the wind industry, and we use TelePresence for activities like product development, quality assurance and follow up, thus supporting a faster product to market strategy and a higher quality product.  We also use telepresence largely in our People and Culture area: doing job interviews and early Performance and Development Dialogue – thus saving a lot of cost and time on travelling."

OJ Winge, senior vice president and general manager, Collaboration Endpoints Technology Group, Cisco

"In a world that is increasingly mobile, social, visual and virtual, individuals are dictating how, when and where they communicate and collaborate inside and outside of the workplace. With today's TelePresence and mobility announcements, Cisco is continuing to make "any device to any device" a reality, while helping customers collaborate on their own terms on a range of devices that provide a rich and consistent user experience."

Cisco will showcase these new offerings along with other collaboration innovations during a keynote presentation and demonstration on March 27 at Enterprise Connect in Orlando, and additionally to virtual audiences through the March 2012 Cisco Collaboration Virtual Experience.

Additional Resources:

·         Learn more about these announcements and ask questions to Cisco product experts on the March 2012 Cisco Collaboration Virtual Experience.

·         Find more information about the Cisco TelePresence TX9000 Series.

·         Find more information about the Cisco Jabber portfolio. 

·         Social Media: Cisco Collaboration Community, Cisco Collaboration and Video Blogs, @CiscoCollab and@TelePresence on Twitter, Cisco Collaboration and Cisco TelePresence on Facebook.

Technorati Tags:

Cisco, video, TelePresence, high quality video, collaboration, interoperability, endpoints, post PC era, Jabber, Enterprise Connect, unified conferencing, mobile, iPad, Windows, Android, Cius,

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About Cisco Collaboration

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go tohttp://newsroom.cisco.com.

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