Alphawest launches enterprise collaboration based on Cisco Quad

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 30 March 2011 15:36

Business IT - Networking

Optus subsidiary, Alphawest, has launched an enterprise collaboration practice based on Cisco Quad that combines its information management and unified communications (UC) capabilities and Optus' network capabilities to deliver "next generation collaboration solutions that help businesses transform the way they communicate, share information, and work together."

The practice will make use of the Optus Evolve, MPLS-based IP network, the Optus mobile network and Optus cloud computing services "to demonstrate how organisations can deliver a social, mobile, and virtual workspace to employees."

Liam Fraser, Alphawest's general manager of marketing, said: "Alphawest's enterprise collaboration practice is a natural progression of our specialist unified communications and information management skills and know-how - our goal is to deliver powerful solutions for our customers to transform the way they communicate, share information and knowledge, work together and enable greater efficiency.

"By extending and growing our collaboration offerings, we can transcend traditional collaboration tools to deliver customers a true virtual enterprise workspace of the future. It's about helping our customers overcome the challenges of separated information silos, disconnected communication systems, and a workforce that is constantly challenged with managing the inbound river of emails while needing to be more mobile."

Alphawest has become one of the first local customers for Cisco Quad, launched with limited availability last June. In a Cisco blog posting at the time Murali Sitaram, vice president and general manager, enterprise collaboration platform, described Quad, saying: "[First] it's designed to work with other collaboration platforms and document management systems that are already on the market, thereby allowing customers to leverage their existing investments.

"Second, we've identified four forms of systems that will be available in time and that Cisco Quad brings together. Think of them as four different places where people 'live' at work. Some people live in documents or creating content, be it PowerPoint presentations, videos, IM or other multimedia. Some people live in just talking to others or hanging out in meetings, connecting with one or few or many'¦There are other people who live in business transaction systems.

"It might be a worker a package-shipping service who's taking an order or ensuring delivery of a box from a central facility to a customer, and she's recording and interacting with a transaction system the company built. Or she might be sitting in front of a call-centre screen and transacting with an ERP system. And finally, there's a growing number of people who live more in social systems, creating through crowd sourcing, blogs, wikis and connecting with communities.

"Cisco Quad is at the nexus of these four systems, integrating the creation of content, the communications platforms, the business transactional systems and the social capabilities. It's further set apart by the real-time nature of this integration, by its open architecture, by the fact that video is an embedded form of communication for this platform, and by the fact that Quad takes policy and security to the next level so that people can safely and securely share information within their professional network."