By Chandler Leik rAVe Staffer Dirk Schlesinger, the global lead for manufacturing industries of Cisco Consulting Services, delivered the Opening Keynote Address of ISE 2014 on Mon., 3 Feb. 2014 at 6:00 p.m. His speech revolved around “Kick-Starting the Market for Building Automation.” Managing Director of ISE Mike Blackman prefaced Schlesinger’s speech saying it was […]

By Angie Mistretta Cisco We are just under a week away from Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) and our teams are geared up and ready to go!  If you are planning to be in Amsterdam for this event, stop by and visit Cisco in Stand 12-B74. Our presence at this year’s event is even bigger than […]

Cisco, making its second appearance at the show, will be showing five new products and technologies at the Integrated Systems Europe show in Amsterdam next month. We have the inside scoop — we spent the day there this past Tuesday and shot six videos that include an overall review of everything Cisco will have at […]

Cisco new Edge 340 Digital Media Player (DMP) is designed to be a digital signage media player optimized for touch-based signage applications. It uses hardware-accelerated video and is pre-integrated with both single-touch and multi-touch capabilities. Designed to be used with Power over Ethernet (PoE), the Edge 340 comes in both Wi-Fi and non-Wi-Fi models (wires […]

Dirk Schlesinger, the global lead for manufacturing industries of Cisco Consulting Services, will present the Opening Keynote Address of ISE 2014. Titled ‘Kick-Starting the Market for Building Automation,’ Schlesinger’s speech will give attendees an exclusive insight into how a new cross-industry initiative set up by Cisco, ABB, Bosch and LG will transform the world of […]

If you’re attending ISE 2014 Feb. 4-6, you won’t want to miss the following professional development and networking opportunities. There’s less than a month to go, so plan accordingly. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. Register for Your CTS Exam at ISE: Again this year, you can take the CTS, CTS-D and CTS-I exams at Integrated […]

New VC technology lets everyone into the party It always amazes me the calls I get from very large organizations and universities making the comment “We don’t want Cisco or Polycom endpoints.” At first I thought this was just a few fringe organizations, but it is becoming all too common request as of lately. While […]

Integrated Systems Events announced this week that Dr. Dirk Schlesinger, the global lead for manufacturing industries of Cisco Consulting Services, will present the opening keynote address of ISE 2014. Schlesinger’s address, “Kick-Starting the Market for Building Automation,” will give attendees an exclusive insight into how a new cross-industry initiative set up by Cisco, ABB, Bosch […]

By Monica Heck Special to InfoComm International Whether you call it simply unified communications (UC) or you also throw collaboration into the mix (UCC), it’s clear that this years-old-yet-bleeding-edge technology has finally gained its footing. Even if you struggle to define the collection of videoconferencing, chat, email and other solutions that fall under the UC […]

Infonetics Research has released excerpts from its 2Q13 Enterprise Telepresence and Video Conferencing Equipment report, which tracks dedicated and PBX-based video conferencing and telepresence infrastructure and endpoints: There’s now evidence the videoconferencing market is bouncing back. “After a tumultuous 2012 that saw growth in the videoconferencing market screech to a halt, sales returned to year-over-year […]

        To see a list of all the awards we are giving as part of our 2013 rAVe Best of InfoComm awards, click here. To see all our of InfoComm 2013 coverage, click here. Most Creative New Product: Cisco Ava 500 iRobot Cisco’s AV 500 iRobot is a VTC system that’s basically […]

Any of you following my Press Release Challenge may wonder what lessons we can learn from the rewrites I attempted over the past couple weeks. One thing I learned was that writing press releases isn’t easy. However there are some very common themes into how to make your message more effective when putting one out. […]

Alright, it’s the last week of the AVPhenom Press Release Challenge, and as such, I wanted to make it hard on myself I guess.  I didn’t get any nominations this week, so I had to dig into the nominations of the past couple weeks.  I wanted to rewrite one fellow BlogSquad writer Lee Distad sent […]

Vaddio EasyUSB video solutions have tested compatible with Cisco WebEx Meeting Center. In addition to sharing a desktop, documents or web browser with Vaddio video solutions, WebEx users can now share high definition video up to 720p and have remote pan, tilt and zoom control. “We are committed to assuring that all of Vaddio’s professional […]

The pervasive theme at InfoComm for Cisco was all about collaboration. The company actually demonstrated a partnership with Prysm on a telepresence solution, but one of the cooler new things at InfoComm had to be their iRobot solution. Dubbed the Ava 500, Cisco and iRobot signed a joint marketing agreement to get the portable telepresence […]

By John Restrick Cisco I am a strong believer in the power of video; video can transform the relationships we have with our colleagues, partners, suppliers and customers. Our goal is to make video as universally available and easy to use as voice and data are today. Recent developments  make it possible to scale video […]

The show is still a day away, but Cisco’s director of telepresence solutions marketing, Angie Mistretta, took time to speak to rAVe founder Gary Kayye about what the company has planned for InfoComm 2013 in its booth. Cisco is showing partnerships using its products, including an iRobot! Yes, a robot! Watch this video to learn […]

By Snorre Kjesbu Over the past decade, I’ve worked on a number of different projects aimed at improving communications using video conferencing and telepresence. In that time, I’ve been fortunate to be involved with key innovations at first Tandberg then Cisco that have had great impact on video collaboration: Forging life-like experience with immersive telepresence […]

If you want to understand networks better and you want to talk to IT professionals, you need to consider taking Cisco’s CCENT certification classes – listen to my podcast to hear why and click here to read about the CCENT: https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccent Having trouble listening to the podcast on this page? You can subscribe using RSS, iTunes or the Stitcher mobile App Podcast: Play in […]

Cisco is basically hiding this white paper, but we found it — and it’s a great read. Basically, it goes over the basics about how the cloud works. As our market starts seeing more cloud applications (e.g., VTC systems that are cloud-based), as well as content sending (e.g., digital signage delivery) via the cloud, this […]

Revolabs today announced that the Revolabs FLX – a wireless VoIP conference phone – has successfully completed interoperability testing with Cisco Unified Communications Manager, version 8.6. Already a solution developer within the Cisco TelePresence technology category with the HD Single/Dual Channel wireless microphone systems, the company now joins the collaboration category with the FLX. The Cisco Developer Network unites Cisco with third-party […]

eWeek reported this week that Cisco will be the first to break the 1-Gigabit barrier on Wi-Fi networks when it introduces an 802.11ac access point in 2013. Cisco says it will introduce an 802.11ac module in the first half of next year that can plug into an existing Cisco Aironet 3600 access point. 802.11ac is […]

IDC estimates the unified communications market (videoconferencing is one component), to grow to $44 billion by 2015. Microsoft’s Lync has enjoyed very little serious competition until this point. But now Cisco has released Jabber, a new crossplatform communications and messaging application designed to compete directly with Microsoft’s Lync. Working with all client devices and operating […]

Last summer Polycom bought HP’s video and telepresence business, becoming the exclusive videoconferencing supplier for HP’s reseller and integrator businesses. Now they will launch the first integrated, all-in-one solution bundle to come from the two vendors that’s intended to be sold through the channel. There will also be more bundles in the future. Hewlett Packard […]

No press conference this time, no big announcement. Cisco just shuts off sales of its consumer videoconferencing system, umi. Call it tiptoeing away from an ill-fated business debacle. Call it slinking away from another disaster for the once-infallible Cisco who thought it could easily crossover into consumer marketing. Introduced in Oct. 2010, umi offered full […]

Cisco launches its Cius tablet (pronounced “SeeUs”) for business, a 7” touch screen tablet computer running on the Android operating system. Yes, it’s definitely going to be compared to the iPad. But this Cisco product is all about business and Cius comes in two form factors: tablet and a desktop dock — a phone-like format. […]

Cisco unveils a new “Home Energy Management System” that includes a 7” touch screen computer — what they say is their “first consumer gadget for the smart grid.”   The Cisco Home Energy Controller will allow users to monitor their energy use device-by-device, react to changes in energy prices and automate energy use. For example, if […]

Best New Video Product: Cisco Show and Share. Cisco’s Show and Share is the best competitive product we’ve seen that could potentially unseat the market leader, the Sonic Foundry MediaSite, in video storage and serving on-demand content.

The European Commission approved the $3.4 billion acquisition, and the U.S. Department of Justice won’t challenge it: Cisco’s acquisition of Tandberg will go through and change the video conferencing landscape forever. But as with any political victory, there’s wheeling-and-dealing that pays the price for the deal. In this case, to win EC blessing, Cisco agreed […]

Bob Snyder Editor, rAVe Europe In a global recession, what do the cash rich companies do? They go shopping! IT companies are looking for acquisitions, as organic growth is difficult given the poor economy. And valuations are very cheap now. That’s why IBM ($13 billion in cash) is buying Sun for $6.5 Billion. IBM wants […]

A humongous company entering an existing market tends to validate it, and that’s what Cisco will do for high definition video conferencing with the company’s announcement of its new TelePresence product. Sure, companies such as PolyVision, Polycom, TANDBERG, ClearOne, VTEL and Sony slogged through this market for years before technology caught up with what they […]

By Gary Kayye, CTS When I saw the Cisco’s version of HD videoconferencing, called Cisco TelePresence, I was extremely impressed, as I have been with all the HD-based VTC systems.  But, when I started to ask a question of Cisco, I was stopped mid-sentence and told this was, “not videoconferencing; that’s a bad word with […]