Cisco and NTT will team up to migrate up to two million legacy platform users to new cloud models over the next 36 months.
The collaboration will entail leveraging Cisco’s Cloud Migration System and NTT’s managed services to transition a significant proportion of NTT’s customers attached to legacy and on-premises platforms over to Webex’s cloud service. The move has been prompted by the universal adoption of hybrid working and the need for cloud-based solutions and digital collaboration that has accompanied such a structural transition of working practices.
Kristyn Hogan, VP for Global Collaboration Partner Sales at Cisco, wrote:
Together with NTT, we are empowering customers to simplify their cloud environments for enhanced hybrid work and productivity through the Cisco Webex cloud platform, which helps teams securely communicate, ideate, and iterate from anywhere, anytime. It unlocks the promise of hybrid work with a collaboration suite and telephony solution that is flexible, inclusive, supportive, secure, and managed.”
Cisco has said that the migration to the calling, meeting and collaboration capabilities of Webex enables customers to now expect reliable performance with “99.99 percent uptime”. There is also the added benefit of cloud-based calling and collaboration services being substantially more cost-effective than traditional PBX solutions.
“According to NTT research, customers who make the move to cloud voice typically achieve 40-60% savings on average,” Hogan added. “These savings are a result of comprehensive calling plans and a significant reduction of the total cost of ownership and capital expenditure associated with on-premises hardware.”
A Busy 2023 for Cisco and Webex
Cisco’s NTT partnership isn’t their first hybrid working-oriented collaboration. They partnered with U.S. General Services Agency to set up hybrid working devices for government and public sector employees. Recently, they also demonstrated Webex’s interoperability with Teams to create more collaborative devices for hybrid working, including Teams’ capability to run natively on Cisco collaboration devices.
Last week, Cisco revealed it was introducing air gapping to Webex in 2024 to address national security concerns, with the rise of hybrid and remote working fostering worries over data compliance and protection. CallTower also announced that it was offering Webex, Cloud Calling and UCM in the Cloud for government and public sector customers requiring FedRAMP certification.
However, Cisco announced a 10 percent decline in collaboration sales in February, revealed during its second-quarter earnings forll of fiscal year 2023. Scott Herren, Chief Financial Officer at Cisco, attributed the downturn in sales to a decline in meetings and collaboration devices.
NTT’s Continuing Growth
NTT’s close collaboration with Cisco saw it named the first partner of Webex in the EMEA region to offer Webex Calling via a cloud-connected PSTN last year. This enabled value-added resalers (VARs) with Cisco to offer a more comprehensive cloud-calling solution that enhances the end-user enterprise communication experience.
Last year NTT also collaborated with Arkadin to launch their UC-Connect solution. This was a feature-rich UCaaS offering that combined Arkadin’s UC portfolio with the advanced SD-WAN capabilities offered by NTT Communications to support the needs of multinational mid-market companies around Europe.
