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Abstract
Your clients, vendors and workforce don't always operate in the same building, state or country. Cisco Collaboration Endpoint products make communicating with your counterparts across town or on the other side of the world easy. This white paper provides you with product specifications and capabilities for Cisco's phone, desktop, and large screen immersive videoconferencing options.
Sample
Video conferencing has been around for a long time. Until recently, however, it was often limited to executive conference rooms for high-level meetings, special promotions, or corporate presentations.
With the advent of lower-cost high-quality technology, using collaboration to communicate is becoming more the norm than the exception. Much of the communication process is achieved using non-verbal cues. With a traditional telephone, you miss out on these important aspects of the conversation. Using collaboration endpoints, call participants can now communicate as if they were in the same room as the call recipient. Face-to-face communication makes it easier to understand what is being said and to read a situation more accurately, thus eliminating potential mistakes and miscommunication. More often than not, you establish a better rapport with that person than if just speaking over a phone. These capabilities are what collaboration brings to the table.
There are many different situations where communication may be initiated. Perhaps a person is traveling and connects by using a mobile device. Another person might be sitting at her desk in the office while in another location, a group of people are attending the same meeting in the same room. The number of cameras, screens, and microphones may change depending on the situation. The acquisition of Tandberg, with its broad range of video conferencing products, has given Cisco the opportunity to expand their collaboration product line to include endpoints for any given situation.
It used to be that a phone was a phone and a PC was a PC and these were totally separate and distinct tools. Now many IP phones and collaboration endpoints provide high-resolution screens, touchscreen capabilities, voice and video calling, XML/Java application support, and even Android OS for a fuller endpoint experience. Essentially phones have become PCs! Conversely, PCs can run a softphone or Jabber application to become phones. Companies now have a wide choice of products to consider when deploying collaboration to their workers.
This white paper will provide an overview of the different groupings of Cisco collaboration endpoints, their capabilities, and where each might be most effectively used. What you will typically see is that the endpoints in each group differ based on the following criteria:
-Portability
-Number and size of screens
-Number of microphone inputs
-Number of camera inputs
-Video resolution support
Collaboration endpoints can be grouped as follows:
-Immersive TelePresence
-TelePresence integration solutions
-Collaboration room endpoints
-Collaboration desk endpoints
-IP phones
-Software clients
The following sections will provide an overview of the products in each group.
Immersive TelePresence
Immersive TelePresence gives you the feeling of being there in person. High-quality video, size, and placement of screens makes you feel like all participants are sitting around the same table. Some products require custom-built conference rooms while other products can be placed into any meeting room where conferencing is required.
TelePresence Integration Solutions
Integration Solutions give you the power and flexibility to design your own video rooms of all sizes using either Cisco or third-party peripherals. Integration Solutions are comprised of the Cisco TelePresence SX Series and the Cisco TelePresence Integrator C Series.
Collaboration Room Endpoints
These endpoints enable you to turn any meeting room into a collaboration hub. This group includes Cisco TelePresence MX Series, as well as the Profile Series and the TelePresence System 1100.