从事件的角度来看，对于思科来说，这是忙碌的一周（披露：思科是ZK研究客户）。在我的last post，我提到该公司将在迪拜举行第三届年度物联网世界论坛。本周，思科还在旧金山举行年度合作峰会。
就像我一样mentioned in an earlier blog, I expected Spark to be a significant part of the Collaboration Summit, and that certainly is the case. If you're not familiar withSpark, the product is Cisco's Workstream Communications and Collaboration (WCC) tool that competes with the likes of Slack, Unify's Circuit, Glip, and many others.
See also:Altocloud集成了Cisco的Spark以供客户参与
At this year's event, Cisco made an announcement that indicates Spark is shifting away from being a product and evolving into a platform. The vision for Cisco is to use Spark to deliver a single collaboration experience that spans all modes of communications. To deliver on this vision, Cisco announced the Spark products listed below:
- Spark the serviceis a complete, cloud-based collaboration (UCaaS) service delivered from the Cisco collaboration cloud that enables customers to message, meet, or call anyone inside or outside the organization. The Spark service includes 1:1 and group messaging, persistent chat, content sharing, audio/video/web meetings, and voice and video calling. Even though Cisco offers voice calling, it does not compete with its carrier customers, as the Spark service does not include PSTN services. Customers will still purchase the PSTN services from their service provider.
- Spark the room and phone operating system使客户能够连接思科视频端点和IP电话，以激发会议。Cisco拥有一个基于云的协作管理门户网站，以使其能够提供设备，并添加用户和启用功能。另外，用户可以通过移动设备或QR码激活设备本身。为了额外的好处，云管理平台还监视了利用率，因此可以决定整个公司的火花如何采用。
- Spark hybrid servicesconnect Spark to existing Cisco call platforms, such as Communications Manager, Business Edition Series, and HCS services. This is significant for existing customers who want to continue to use the products they are currently using for calls, but also use Spark for messages and meetings. I'm sure there are more planned, but this initial release includes four hybrid services. The first one is directory services, which populates the Spark contact list with the company directory established in the other calling platforms. The next two services deal with calls. Call service connect seamlessly connects call between Spark and the phone system. Once the call is connected, call service aware enables workers to share content with a single click over the same session. Lastly, Cisco is adding an “@spark” calendar service. Workers who use Webex are probably familiar with having to add @webex to calendar invites to add join links to the invite for the organizer's personal room. Similarly, @spark is used to create a Spark room and add links to the invite to launch the application. The downside is that if Spark and Webex are being used, the user needs to add both @spark and @webex.
- Spark for developersis a set of open APIs for ISVs to leverage to build, extend, and customize collaboration experiences. The release of Spark for developers begs the question of what the relationship is with Tropo, Cisco's cPaaS solution. The easy way to think of the difference is that if the ISV wants to integrate with a full collaboration solution, then Spark is the right choice. If the developer wants modular building blocks to add things like “click to chat” to an application, then Tropo is appropriate. At launch, Cisco announced integration with a number of application partners, such as GitHub, Instagram, Pagerduty, Trello, Zendesk, Zapier, IFTTT, and built.io. One important note is that Cisco leveraged the developer best practices from Tropo in putting together the Spark developer program. This will create consistency for Cisco's collaboration developer partners as they move between Spark and Tropo.
Lastly, as part of this launch, Cisco has simplified the process of buying Spark with the following three steps:
- Choose a messaging service:Business messaging, business messaging and basic meetings, or business messaging and advanced meetings.
- 选择通话服务：混合或云调用。
- 选择附加服务：Rooms, audio conferencing, and additional centers, such as events, training, or support.
自从Rowan Trollope接任思科合作业务部门的负责人以来，他一直专注于提高Cisco Products的可用性。该公告的所有部分都集中在创造一种简单，一致的体验上，该体验跨越了所有通信模式，这是思科过去所缺乏的。
One final note, if you want more details on my thoughts of the launch, Dave Michels from TalkingPointz and recorded this video discussing it: