ACE Network: Bringing the Power of Video Meetings to Mobile BYOD Users

I spend a big part of my workday in virtual meetings, as an organizer, participant, or both. When I’m in my office, I can join those meetings from my desktop video endpoint, a Cisco TelePresence EX90, and enjoy the benefits of video communications.

But work isn’t necessarily a place that you go to anymore. I often work outside of my office, so the ability to easily join a video meeting from one of my mobile devices is critical for productive collaboration with colleagues.

For me and many other users on the Cisco ACE service introduction network, participating in video meetings while on-the-go is now a simpler and more effective experience. This significant improvement can be attributed to the new TelePresence and WebEx Working Together, which combines together three collaboration tools: the cloud-based Cisco WebEx conferencing service, Cisco TelePresence video endpoints, and the Cisco Jabber client that delivers voice, video, IM and presence services.

Today over 50,000 Cisco employees have bring-your-own-devices (BYOD), and work in a very mobile way. Yet we collaborate with each other in our jobs and use video to communicate. When I’m on the move I start my Jabber client on my phone or tablet to attend these meetings. Some of the others are in Telepresence rooms, and the rest are using WebEx Meeting Center from their laptops, while I’m on my iPad using Jabber; but they all operate together as a single platform.

Bringing a simpler mobile and video experience to virtual meetings is important for any IT organization; several trends show why:*

60 percent of knowledge workers use a mobile device for work, and those users will have an average of 2.8 connected devices (desktop and mobile) in 2014 – that’s in less than one year!

89 percent of surveyed companies enable BYOD in some form.

The #1 benefit of BYOD for companies is improved employee productivity and more opportunities for them to collaborate.

*Research conducted by the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group

From my own experience, those opportunities to collaborate—especially over video—translate to accelerated connectedness, which ultimately results in using meeting time more effectively from having the freedom to choose the device and applications.

To elaborate on this point – seeing the video portion on my mobile device is more than just a cool experience. It’s a feature that truly brings greater productivity and business value to me, no matter where I am. And with the WebEx-enabled TelePresence meeting solution, organizing and participating in a video meeting is seamless whether on my smartphone or tablet, my laptop or desktop video system.

This post is part of a series about mobility, video, and cloud-based collaboration on the Cisco IT ACE Service Introduction Network. You’ll find more information in these related posts:

Cisco ACE Network Overview

ACE Network: Experience the Newly Improved Cisco Jabber Universal Client

ACE Network: Making Voice Calls Easier with Cisco Unified Mobility Single Number Reach

ACE Network: Testing Desktop Virtualization for Mobile Employees

ACE Network: My Calls are now HD video with the Cisco Jabber Client

ACE Network: Seeing Important Calls Faster with Visual Voicemail

ACE Network: How Cisco Jabber for Windows Helps me Do More with My Laptop

ACE Network: How Cisco Jabber for iPad Enables our Tech-Savvy Sales Force to Stay in Touch

ACE Network: Seamless Collaboration between TelePresence and WebEx Conferencing

ACE Network: Empowering Users with Self-Service Provisioning and Support Tools

ACE Network: Building Stronger Team Relationships with Video Calls