“Clear and Differentiated” Video Wins the Day

Sometimes when the essence of something is so eloquently captured, there’s no need to say it any differently. That’s how I felt when I read Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for Group Video Systems report. In it, we feel Gartner confirms Cisco’s position as an established leader in the group video systems market who offers “a clear and differentiated set of devices, with form factors now available for virtually any meeting space.”

I have a theory on how we achieved a “clear and differentiated” product set – by finding the sweet spot between feature innovation, beautiful design, ease of use and deployment, and cost effectiveness. Concurrently, we’ve enhanced our infrastructure to make multiparty conferencing easier and more affordable. And we’re continuing our work to enable video interoperability in the cloud, especially with Cisco Collaboration Meeting Rooms. These are the hallmarks of our current portfolio and instrumental in our ability to gain market traction in large-scale deployments.

But beyond strengthening our own competitive position, I believe our strategy – bringing to market video solutions at the right quality and value – helped to encourage video adoption and growth for the industry overall. As we reported last quarter (FYQ3), we saw a 60 percent year-over-year unit growth. This is in share gained and also market expansion. That’s great news for Cisco, but it also serves as a good bellwether for the video market as a whole. The appetite for visual communications is clearly growing, and that’s good news for everyone.

What we’re seeing in Gartner’s most recent report has also been validated to me over the past 18 months since we’ve refreshed our entire video endpoint portfolio. Customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive about the design, capabilities and direction of our product portfolio. So, between these two points of validation, it feels really good to know we’re delivering products that are having a positive impact on the market.

Let me know how our video products have positively impacted your work life – especially in clear and differentiated ways.

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