A significant announcement letter from IBM this morning (formalising the news shared at IBM Connect 2017), delivering new integrated solution bundles in partnership with Cisco:
Collaboration solutions from IBM and Cisco bring together the key applications that workers need to be productive and effective: video, voice, unified communications, enterprise social networks, team collaboration, email, and calendar offerings. With the integration of IBM Connections Cloud and Cisco communication capabilities, modern workers can now communicate and collaborate easily across their teams, with their partners, and with their customers. This powerful combination makes information and trained specialists easier to find and creates more personal and effective collaboration.
Collaboration solutions from IBM and Cisco include integrations between:
- IBM Verse email and calendar
- IBM Connections enterprise social network
- Cisco Spark Business Messaging and Basic Meetings
- Cisco Spark Business Messaging, Basic Meetings, and Cloud Advanced Meetings
- Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll
- Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll Plus
- Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll Plus International
The announcement letter discusses the aims of the partnership, specific integrations that are enabled by the combined IBM and Cisco products, as well as the offerings that can now be ordered from IBM via Passport Advantage.
New Integrations
Here are the specific integrations now supported:
- Use simplified ordering capability to license the full suite of Cisco Chat and Meeting capabilities combined with IBM Mail and Social.
- Enable single-sign-on between IBM and Cisco offerings.
- Launch WebEx from Connections Cloud.
- Launch WebEx Personal Meeting from Connections Cloud.
- Leverage my WebEx meeting as the default meeting in my Verse calendar invites.
- Launch or join a WebEx meeting from Verse.
- Use iOS to share content from Connections or Verse within WebEx and Spark:
- WebEx mobile can share a file from Connections Files Cloud.
- Connections Mobile client enables a file to be opened in WebEx of Spark mobile on iOS.
- Spark Mobile enables sharing a file from Connections on iOS.
- Verse mobile enables sharing an attachment in WebEx or Spark mobile on iOS.
- Click to Spark from Nav bar.
- Click to Chat from Connections Cloud Business card to Spark.
- Click to Jabber from Nav bar.
- Click to Chat from Connections Cloud Business card to Jabber.
Many of these were demonstrated on stage at the Connect keynote and breakout sessions, and in many cases, effectively replace existing integrations with IBM Sametime platforms and apps.
New IBM Product Offerings
There are 17 new Cisco-related Passport Advantage products that can be ordered (along with the relevant renewal parts etc, not listed here):
Program name/Description | Part number |
---|---|
Cisco Spark Business Messaging and Basic Meetings Employee Count 3rd Party Per Month | D1T9GLL |
Cisco Spark Business Messaging and Basic Meetings Employee Count 3rd Party Overage | D1T9HLL |
Cisco Spark Business Messaging and Basic Meetings Named User 3rd Party Per Month | D1T9JLL |
Cisco Spark Business Messaging, Basic Meetings and Advanced Meetings Employee Count 3rd Party Per Month | D1T9KLL |
Cisco Spark Business Messaging, Basic Meetings and Advanced Meetings Employee Count 3rd Party Overage | D1T9LLL |
Cisco Spark Business Messaging, Basic Meetings and Advanced Meetings Named User 3rd Party Per Month | D1T9MLL |
Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll Employee Count 3rd Party Per Month | D1T9NLL |
Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll Employee Count 3rd Party Overage | D1T9PLL |
Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll Named User 3rd Party Per Month | D1T9QLL |
Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll Plus Employee Count 3rd Party Per Month | D1T9RLL |
Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll Plus Employee Count 3rd Party Overage | D1T9SLL |
Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll Plus Named User 3rd Party Per Month | D1T9TLL |
Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll Plus International Employee Count 3rd Party Per Month | D1T9ULL |
Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll Plus International Employee Count 3rd Party Overage | D1T9VLL |
Cisco WebEx Conferencing Audio Toll Plus International Named User 3rd Party Per Month | D1T9WLL |
IBM Collaboration Solutions and Cisco Spark Solutions Support Employee Count Per Annum | D1T9XLL |
IBM Collaboration Solutions and Cisco Spark Solutions Support Named User Per Annum | D1T9YLL |
My Thoughts
The Cisco partnership is clearly hugely important to IBM’s future success in the collaboration marketplace (alongside the similar relationship with Box). Whilst I haven’t seen anything publicly stated regarding the future of IBM Sametime, it is becoming ever more apparent that those solutions are becoming legacy offerings and the future for meetings at least is wrapped up in the product offerings and integrations listed above.
Both Spark and Webex are competent and comprehensive enterprise-ready platforms, receiving regular updates and offering impressive support (at least when offered directly).
My hope for the combination of IBM Connections and these platforms is that the integrations become significantly more than just point-in-time snapshots of the possibilities they enable, and instead become solutions that:
- deliver enhanced value now
- are updated as a whole as all the individual products get revved independently on a regular basis
- continue to operate effectively as Pink is made available and beyond…
The proof of the value of this partnership will be not be seen in 2017 or even 2018, but when these combined solutions are delivering real value to customers (and their users) in 2019 and beyond.
And You?
I’d love to know if you’re planning to deploy the integrated IBM/Cisco solutions in your business, and if so, what use cases you’re looking to support. Leave a comment below!