BT and Cisco team up for cloud voice and collaboration push

BT has joined forces with networking giant Cisco to help enterprises reap the benefits of cloud-based voice, video and data communications tools.

The result of this technology tie-up between the two firms is One Cloud Cisco, which is based on the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution and features Jabber, HD video and voice, and BT One Voice.

According to the companies, the platform could help increase employee productivity and reduce the costs associated with communications and collaboration.

Neil Sutton, vice president of global portfolio at BT Global Services, said: "The way people collaborate at work directly influences the quality of the decisions made in companies every day.

"By launching One Cloud Cisco we are offering our customers a new, hosted collaboration tool that is tightly integrated into our One Voice portfolio of services, offering what we believe will be a better experience and significant savings through our pricing policy and flexible service terms."

Eric Waltert, managing director of collaboration at Cisco in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Russia (EMEAR), added: "The rise in mobility has opened up new ways in which teams, employees and customers are choosing to connect and collaborate with one another to get things done.

"BT's One Cloud Cisco provides customers with a sophisticated collaboration and communication experience that corporate IT expects, while also offering the same intuitiveness and simplicity found in easy-to-use software-based consumer communication tools."

To coincide with the product's launch, the two firms have released the results of a survey involving 500 UK IT decision makers, which suggest cloud is increasingly being used to help firms meet the need for better communication and collaboration tools within their organisations.

The research found companies are increasingly facing the risk of "digital dislocation" where what IT can provide cannot live up to employee demands.

More than three-quarters (78 per cent) of respondents said employees do not appreciate how difficult it is for IT departments to meet expectations.

Only one third felt their communications platform is equipped to change with the needs of the business, while 52 per cent said their PBX telephone exchange is outdated and 40 per cent said their Centrex telephone exchange needs replacing.

However, 63 per cent of respondents cited the cloud as a way to overcome these problems, saying it will become the dominant way to deliver voice and communication services in the future.

Of that 63 per cent, 85 per cent said they are looking to deploy such a service in order to meet demand.