Cisco has revealed its five-phase plan to break into the global collaboration market that is estimated to be worth $34 billion (R272 billion). The networking company also sees the launch of its collaboration portfolio as a return to open systems in networking.
"Collaboration is the next phase of the Internet and, at the centre of this phase, is the network," says Chris Thompson, Cisco's senior director of solutions marketing and unified communications (UC). Thompson adds that Cisco hopes to gain 40% of the collaboration market within three to five years.
"We already have 26% of the voice over IP market and, with every new market we enter, we try to get a market share of up to 40%," he says.
Thompson adds Cisco's move into the collaboration space is a significant step forward for the company, which aims to close the productivity gap that was created by the proliferation of varying communication tools.
The plan
The first phase of the plan - migration - will see the company encouraging customers to move certain work phases over to IP telephony. The second phase - acceleration - entails companies using IP telephony over a broader number of people in their organisations.
The third phase is the transformation phase, where companies will start to deploy UC and change the way their businesses operate. During the "include" phase, companies will extend their new capabilities to people outside of their networks. By the time organisations reach the final phase, the transcend phase, employees will be able to take advantage of the best features of the new capabilities, says Cisco.
Thompson says collaboration will be the base for communication and networking for companies in the near future.
Return to open systems
Thompson explains Cisco's network platform uses open standards protocols to expose critical collaboration services such as instant messaging and call control to a broad range of devices and applications. The Cisco collaboration portfolio leverages this network architecture to create a collaboration experience, from simple text messaging to telepresence sessions.
Obsidian Systems MD Muggie van Staden says the focus of open systems should be to enable businesses to run effectively. "Tools built on open systems must not restrain or constrict a business. In this way, applications can be run across platforms."
Van Staden adds that proprietary vendors such as Cisco can also build open source tools and systems. He believes companies should have the chance to choose between obtaining open source software freely or through vendors.
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