The UCStrategies Experts share their expertise in bylined articles, opinion pieces, blogs, and podcasts, to define unified communications, educate you about unified communications technologies, and help you make informed decisions about unified communications solutions.
UCStrategies.com defines unified communications as “Communications integrated to optimize business processes.” The definition of unified communications narrows significantly when you can read and hear about real-world examples that other companies are implementing right now—and apply them to your situation.
This section offers learning tools to help you plan your unified communications implementation.
This section provides a practical, vendor-independent service to any Enterprise that is seeking the benefits of Unified Communications. How do you pull everything together to implement unified communications? Use the tools in this sequence to define unified communications for your business.
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Cisco Systems, Inc. unveils its small-cell hardware and intelligent software solution touted to help enterprises and carriers enhance their wireless connections over 3G/4G cellular and Wi-Fi hybrid networks. With these new hardware and software, Wi-Fi networks can connect with 3G and 4G networks. Cisco says that its new solution will also help networks cope with and address the predicted thirteen-fold growth of global mobile traffic by 2017.
The products will be showcased by Cisco in the forthcoming Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona.
The intelligent software, dubbed as Cisco Quantum, is a result of combining in-house enhancements and technologies from the company’s recent $1.5-billion acquisitioning spree of smaller companies. Technologies acquired by Cisco from buying BroadHop, Intucell, and Cariden Technologies have all been instrumental in developing Cisco Quantum.
Cisco Quantum includes a network abstraction suite (for real-time network data collection), a policy suite (to aid service providers in scaling, managing, and monetizing their services on any network type), an analytics suite (to help make real-time policy decisions based on data visualization), and a Wide Area Network (WAN) orchestration suite that is equipped with network management tools.
Cisco made an announcement on February 19 that Vodafone Netherlands had deployed a Cisco Quantum component in order to, among other things, “enable application-level usage controls for enterprise customers.”
The hardware, Cisco 3G Small Cell Module, can be readily connected into Cisco Aironet Wi-Fi access points in order to integrate both 3G cellular and Wi-Fi capabilities. A standalone version of the hardware is also available.
Designed for outdoor use, such as those seen in bus stops and light poles, a router called Cisco ASR 901S offers wireless connectivity by linking fiber and copper backhaul to signals from cellular and Wi-Fi wireless networks.
Ken Rehbehn, an analyst from the Yankee Group, commented on Cisco’s move into the forays of small cells and outdoor backhaul platforms. He said that it was “a natural next step” and that, “It gives the operators a choice. It gives Cisco an opportunity to leverage something that they are very strong at, which is excellent Wi-Fi capabilities for network operators.” (KOM) Link. Link. Link.