For many companies, delivering the meaningful moments that clients need is a process that begins with embracing a more agile and flexible approach to communication. Leading UC vendors like Cisco are supporting that transition with a strategy for a simplified and enhanced move to the cloud.
Director of Collaboration at Cisco EMEAR, Vaughan Klein, spoke to us about the "cloud promise," and the accelerating path to a workforce better empowered to support customer experience.
The Changing Market in the Last Decade
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Vaughan Klein[/caption]
Vaughan started out with Cisco in 2000 and worked with them for four years before leaving to join a small software company. In 2008, he returned to Cisco and made his way up the ladder to a leadership role for EMEA.
"The transitions in the marketplace have been huge over the last 10 years. We started with phone systems and not much else. Now we're looking at full-cloud collaboration experiences with next-gen video endpoints.”
Though the transition may seem slower in the UK for now, Vaughan says that there's a strong desire from customers to move to the cloud, and we're now at the beginning of a significant transformation in this part of the world.
Cisco has just reported strong financial results for FY2Q19 that impressed analysts with their application revenue rising from 18% to 24%. This increase is driven by the Collaboration portfolio namely the Webex Collaboration, Cloud Calling and Contact Centre suite of products and represents the rising demand to consume these applications from their customer base.
How Cisco Helps with the Path to Cloud
Cloud calling momentum is accelerating. We are now moving away from early adopters to more risk averse, conservative customers. Traditionally most cloud communications business was with SMB and Cisco led with a calling focus then added other services on top. Cisco recognises that large enterprises have different challenges and are often driving projects from a problem solving perspective with meetings and team collaboration and then add calling later.
Early success with large and mid market enterprises are those who are cloud competent already, there are lots of other customers who want to move but need help. Cisco has very large customers – some with hundreds of thousands of lines. They will not switch overnight. Many are planning 3-5 year transition programs. Cisco are helping their customers to make the transition from premises to cloud via hybrid much easier.
Cisco has had a huge customer base for some time now, primarily in the large enterprise space. The intuitive solutions that Cisco has to offer gives companies of all sizes the freedom to explore the benefits of the cloud. Cisco's state-of-the-art solutions deliver seamless transitions into new and improve communication environments.
"The first thing we have at Cisco is parity. We want people to have the same tools whether they're on cloud or on-premises"
"From there, we can ensure a streamlined move to the cloud without unnecessary downtime or confusion."
The BroadSoft acquisition for Cisco was also a significant part of improving their ability to serve customers from all edges of the market. "We've always been strong for large companies, while BroadSoft was good with smaller businesses. Together, we can help businesses both large and small to transition."
