Our regular Cisco podcast features expert guest Jonathan George, who is a Digital Collaboration Lead at Adoptt, and he joins Patrick to review the latest updates from the world of Cisco collaboration.
Firstly Patrick and Jonathan discuss seemingly closer integration between Cisco’s meeting and collaboration platforms and Microsoft’s productivity suite of tools. Jonathan tells Patrick that there are now more integration features between the two platforms giving users greater flexibility to use the productivity platforms they want, and also use their preferred methods of communicating or collaborating. This follows Cisco’s premise of building bridges not islands and is a welcome development within the industry.
Next up Jonathan moves on to tell us about some new features with the ‘Webex button’ now being available on cloud registered endpoints. The news makes joining meetings and shared spaces even more simple for users.
Then Jonathan and Patrick move onto discuss some changes to Cisco’s pricing models. Cisco’s MSRP, manufacturer’s suggested retail price, is now being removed as Cisco is reverting back to single subscription costs with list prices, from the global price list, and a discount structure for the endpoint hardware. The original pricing structures had been potentially confusing to some and this move is designed to make the process of getting pricing through partners more transparent.
Jonathan then moves on to discuss some news about digital signage options on collaboration or meeting endpoints. Often the high end hardware that is used for video meetings or presentations is neglected when not in use, but now with a new partnership Cisco are allowing users to display content of their choice onto devices when they are not in use. Jonathan explains why this could be very useful to some organisations.
After some real world encounters in his role as Digital Collaboration Lead at Adoptt, Jonathan, tells Patrick about the challenges that are still being faced in terms of user adoption when it comes to new collaborative technologies. In many organisations users have not fully embraced the technology’s potential and are still looking to the traditional face to face meeting. Jonathan examines how we can help users understand and leverage the technologies by drawing an analogy with the “Faceapp” craze.
Finally Patrick asks Jonathan about some questions that have been sent in by listeners to the podcast. The first is in relation to Cisco’s progress with its new offerings in the headset market. The second examines Cisco’s potential plans in the worlds of augmented and virtual reality and the potential for the technologies within collaboration environments, and maybe within Webex Teams.
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Presenter and Tech Journalist Patrick Watson and expert guest Jonathan George.
