Enterprise Collaboration: Cisco Quad

Cisco Quad Interface
I had the pleasure of watching a demonstration of Cisco‘s vision for internal collaboration a couple of years ago at a conference I was speaking at. Harbrinder Kang Cisco’s Director of Collaboration Technologies led the demonstration and I remember thinking at the time: “If they ever put this into production it is going to be a game changer”. It looks like the vision deck has become a reality – Cisco just announced Quad their enterprise collaboration tool will be shipping this fall – check out their product tour.

The demo puts the focus, as it should be, on the people in the organization. With tools like: presence detection, click to video call, chat and micro-blogging as well a full smorgasbord of enterprise security and roles based permissions this tool looks capable of beginning the drive toward true virtual enterprise collaboration.

However, the challenge with any collaboration toolset is user adoption. You need to deliver immediate value to your audience and tie it to a tangible ROI for the executive team or your project is doomed before it begins.  It will be interesting to see how Cisco approaches designing interaction and engagement for client companies and working with them to create phased, strategic rollout plans.

3 Reasons Earth Day Sucks

Earth Day sucks. Yes, you read that correctly. The whole day makes no sense. Earth Day was yesterday and all day long I thought – why are we celebrating? Earth Day is like Valentine’s Day for the planet, a great day for marketers but of very little value for the actual recipients.

Read the full article »

You Own the Customer’s Experience

I had to field an interesting question today and it got me thinking: Who owns the Customer's Experience? In many cases folks would say - Marketing owns the customer relationship before they buy and Support owns the customer relationship after they buy. If a company is "very" forward thinking they may have people specifically ...

Read the full article »

Comic Books are Dead

I never thought I would say this: Comic books are dead. Here's the backstory: I have been a reasonably avid collector for the past 20 years (scary). Over that time I have read thousands and thousands of books and really enjoyed the art and the stories that were presented. But, standing in my local comic book store ...

Read the full article »

evt78j4pk2

Read the full article »

3 Simple Rules for College Career Centers

This is a bit of a rant but it is worth mentioning. Maybe it will help someone else someday. Colleges take note - If you want employers to post jobs on your job boards there are a couple of key things you should do. 1. Make the job board easy to find - how about something ...

Read the full article »

Are we asking the right questions?

"I guess I don't get why RIAs get a hall pass from discoverability and accessibility or how rich they can be without a modicum of both. " ~msweeney from a post on the IAI message list. There has been a healthy debate on the IAI message list concerning RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) over the past day ...

Read the full article »

Happy New Year! Now get back to work!

With the start of the New Year I thought I would pull my blogging from behind the corporate firewalls and bring it to the people. Not that I have anything pertinent to say this evening - or morning as the case may be - but, I will... and if people stop by from time to ...

Read the full article »