Telstra, one of the leading telecommunications and information services companies, recently announced its Cisco certified CCA-SP partner status where it would provide a new CCA-SP service to complete the Cisco Webex Meetings suite for enterprise customers. Designed to support changing workplace needs, where companies need their teams to collaborate seamlessly across time zones and locations, Cisco Webex Meetings from Telstra simplifies the conferencing strategy.
Cisco Webex Meetings from Telstra offers highly reliable and effective audio, web and video conferencing, through the Cisco Webex meetings suite. I spoke to James Townsend, Telstra’s Collaboration Specialist, about the new CCA-SP architecture.
Townsend joined Telstra after a numerous years working with world-class carrier networks on their conferencing, global UC and communication strategies.
What is Webex CCA-SP and How Does it Affect Webex Meetings suite?
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James Townsend[/caption]
James told me that Cisco has always had a meeting solution in place that complements the workplace collaboration environment. Telstra has been focused on building a scalable solution that interconnects seamlessly with Cisco. "This allows our customers to move their conferencing needs into the Cisco environment, without having to worry about losing the assured reliability of a PSTN network."
Today, conferencing and collaboration are crucial in any industry. Costs associated with audio conferencing vary from month to month, depending on the number of conferences and how many attendees are at each conference. Businesses with a global or national presence have an even greater challenge, because they don’t pay the same price at each location due to varying call costs. Variables such as these make budgeting for audio conferencing challenging, especially when adding services such as video conferencing and team collaboration.
The Cisco Webex CCA-SP service from Telstra takes the variables out of conferencing and makes monthly conferencing bills more predictable, allowing businesses to easily budget for their conferencing. This enables businesses to see a return on their investment in audio conferencing, pay on a per-port basis and no longer be concerned about the cost of toll calls.
The solution is also designed to provide companies with a single, central meeting experience that improves reliability and audio quality. For the employee, James noted: "We're giving people a core meeting experience that's simple and fast to suit the way they work, wherever they work."
With Telstra's Cisco offering, there's just one button to push, the solution is both device and app optimised, and everything is crafted to provide a more intuitive working platform.
"The Webex CCA-SP solution integrates with PSTN and IP voice to improve meeting experiences and reduce call costs"
Conferencing Market Trends
There's a growing demand for reliable services around the world, available to employees almost wherever they might be. Telstra’s Cisco Webex CCA-SP offerings are available to Cisco Webex Meetings clients in this fashion. "We look at the various points of presence that companies have, and search for places where we can connect our services with Cisco. For instance, in Europe, we pair our London data centre with Cisco's Amsterdam Session Border Controller (SBC) and so on. This improves both reliability and cost efficiency."
Lately, solutions like Cisco's video and audio conferencing options have been evolving, thanks to the evolution of SIP. According to James, the latest trend for conferencing is to move to video at an increasing pace. "The appetite for video is being amplified by the growing presence of younger generations in the workplace. People today are starting to feel more comfortable about their image being pushed out there. More an users and teams will want the full experience that comes with video in the future."
