For many years, companies have sought better ways to involve customers, partners, and suppliers in their collaborative interactions without the burdensome requirements of scaling those interactions in person. The rationale for doing so is clear-meetings with external groups can mean faster decisions, improved customer intimacy and cross-cultural communications, and the ability to use scarce resources more efficiently or move products to market faster. Traditional video conferencing using a video bridge-usually a service provided over a third-party network-is expensive and cumbersome, making it impractical and frustrating for many users.
Business Benefits
Cisco has developed a better way for you to connect with customers, partners, and suppliers with the Cisco TelePresence™ solution. Through a powerful combination of technology and design, local and remote participants feel as if they are in the same room (Figure 1). With intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration, you can now use your existing network to have a virtual meeting with anyone you want, any time you want to.
Figure 1. Cisco TelePresence solution
Following are some benefits of intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration:
• Extend Cisco TelePresence meetings beyond your enterprise boundary to collaborate with your customers, suppliers, and partners. You do not need to build and manage a separate overlay network at additional cost or deploy an outside connection that may not meet your security requirements.
• The solution maintains the simplicity of Cisco TelePresence features, such as "one button to push" to initiate meetings, allowing you to meet with others quickly and easily. Arranging meetings is as simple as making a phone call.
• The solution uses services in the network to guarantee quality of service (QoS), security, and value-added capabilities such as scalable multipoint meetings, scheduling, and directory services for a quality Cisco TelePresence experience, one that can securely and reliably span different enterprise networks using standards, encryption, and your existing firewalls.
Applications
Your most important business relationships extend outside your company, and they often require face-to-face meetings. With a Cisco TelePresence system enabled for intercompany collaboration, you can be more productive and more competitive: You can have some of your most important face-to-face interactions more easily, conveniently, and productively. Applications for intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration abound. For example, two Wall Street financial companies can arrange a merger for their distant clients by holding joint, confidential, and frequent "face-to-face" meetings. Global manufacturing companies can conduct cross-functional meetings that include suppliers and partners without waiting for people to travel. Pharmaceutical companies can meet with physicians and patients together during drug trials. Any time you want your customers, suppliers, or partners face to face in highly secure communication around "one table", you can accomplish it with an intercompany Cisco TelePresence meeting.
Solution
The Cisco TelePresence system is enabled for intercompany collaborations through the following components:
• Cisco TelePresence technology
– Cisco TelePresence endpoint security provides for authentication and encryption.
– Cisco TelePresence Manager offers directory and "one-button" scheduling services (enabled on the customer premises or hosted in the service provider network).
– The Cisco TelePresence Multipoint Switch easily and reliably includes three or more locations in a single meeting (enabled on the customer premises or hosted in the service provider network for even greater scalability).
• Enterprise network
– Cisco Unified Communications Manager Version 7.0.2 is included in the solution (options for hosted solutions are also available for even greater flexibility). Enterprise network security is achieved with Cisco IOS® Firewall and Network Address Translation (NAT) Traversal.
– Network-management tools are included for network preassessment, provisioning, monitoring, fault detection, and troubleshooting.
• Service provider network
– The service provider network is a Cisco TelePresence system-enabled network with QoS for point-to-point and multipoint session bandwidth management.
– Intercompany exchange capabilities include enterprise topology hiding; policy-based access control; and privacy and encryption support for interworked, policed, intercompany call routing.
– Scheduling and directory service options simplify meeting establishment with private enterprise and public Cisco TelePresence locations.
– The service provider network includes hosted multipoint meet-me services for scalable meetings.
– The network includes network-management tools for monitoring, fault detection, and troubleshooting.
– The service provider network offers billing and mediation capabilities.
Unlike video conferencing solutions that require you and your contacts to use the same private network overlaid on top of your network, intercompany Cisco TelePresence collaboration gives you the flexibility to take advantage of your existing enterprise network, connections, and value-added services from service providers.
A well-managed, properly provisioned enterprise network can carry video, voice, and data traffic from one end of an enterprise to the other while maintaining a quality experience. But this performance extends only as far as the edge of the corporate intranet, at which point performance guarantees disappear. Today's networks are islands: for data communications between enterprises, you must depend on best-effort intercarrier handoffs or the public Internet. For video applications, performance guarantees are particularly critical to successful use. That is why Cisco has worked with its service provider partners to develop this breakthrough Cisco TelePresence capability for secure, reliable, and business-class service for intercompany collaboration.
