Simplifying Midsize Collaboration Deployments

In my last post I talked about the impact that low-effort experiences can have on customer satisfaction. I singled out my home broadband provider for criticism, and so thought it only fair that I talk about a recent great experience I had with them.

Last month, my provider sent an email telling me that they’d proactively upgraded my home broadband service to 50Mbps. All I had to do was replace my old cable modem/router. The process couldn’t have been simpler. The new modem was delivered with pre-configured settings. All I had to do was connect it, power up, and enter the network ID and password onto my devices.

Contrast this experience with lengthy and complicated installations that customers often face when installing multiple communications and collaboration solutions from multiple vendors.

For small and medium-sized businesses in particular, with smaller IT teams, it is critical that solutions are easy to deploy, manage, and use. So we’ve taken a different approach.

The Cisco Business Edition 6000 consolidates multiple virtualized collaboration applications into one server solution that is right-priced and right-sized for small to medium sized businesses. IT departments can rapidly deploy voice, video, messaging, or presence solutions, starting with their highest-priority use cases — and add additional functionality later.

Radio 538, a 24×7 broadcaster in the Netherlands, chose Cisco Business Edition 6000 as part of its network solution. Radio 538 needed to quickly deploy a robust and reliable communications platform that could handle large call volumes for their live talk shows, provide unified communications services to 160 employees, and keep broadcasting as it moved into a new state-of the-art facility.

The newest member of the BE6000 family, the BE6000S goes even further, combining essential collaboration, routing, gateway, and security capabilities into a single server solution that is designed specifically for organizations with 25 to 150 employees.

And like my new pre-configured example, two initiatives are further streamlining the deployment of BE6000 solutions. Even before we ship it to a customer site:

Pre-configured Image: Working with our certified partners, we have factory-installed pre-configured settings for the core collaboration applications. This allows partners to save time on common configuration tasks, while leaving the flexibility to adjust to customers’ specific requirements once on-site.

Config to Order Portal: This initiative, led by authorized distributors worldwide, allows Cisco partners to securely submit information about a customer’s configuration so that we can pre-configure it prior to shipment to a customer site.

These options enable our partners to accelerate deployment times – saving up to 60% off the average installation time. Faster, more cost-effective installs mean less disruption for IT teams. And they mean users can start collaborating even sooner.