Notes From Cisco WebEx Connect Session

Rough notes taken during this morning's presentation on WebEx Connect:

• How does IT meet the competing demands from end users where end users can obtain solutions from the consumer market with updates to tools occurring at a much faster rate than traditional enterprise IT software.
• Need a new architecture and approach. Want to support a 3-6 month delivery cycle.
• But, need to maintain security, compliance, and other policies
• Cisco Collaboration Architecture: higher level of services (presence, messaging), designed for other people to extend (mashups), designed for enterprise environment (policy management)
• Unified Communications + Web 2.0 + SaaS supported by a network services layer linked to API strategy (based on web services) and Cisco developer services program, etc
• Leverage Cisco network expertise (Cisco Intelligent Network)
• WebEx Media Tone Network
  • 9 globally linked data center, 99.99 reliability, hot site redundancy, peering with BGP, audit against ISO-17799 and SAS70 Type II standards
  • Intelligent, secure, reliable, and scalable global delivery
  • 125K WebEx sessions per day across 94 days
  • Operational Support System: software deployment, site/resource provisioning, usage monitoring, network performance, etc
• WebEx Connect Collaboration Services
  • e-Mail
  • Presence
  • Instant Messaging
  • Shared Workspaces
  • Voice
  • Video
  • Web meetings (conferencing)
• Development
  • Platform APIs
• Unified user experience, single client
• Cisco focused on a communication-centric user experience, existing tools (IBM, Microsoft) are more document centric or file centric and historically, asynchoronous
• Client interface has elements of social networking, profiles, etc.
• Team spaces have group discussion forums, persistent chat, document sharing and widgets (note: not sure whether document sharing implied document library with version controls, etc)
• Widgets: calendar, task, bulletin board, but can create customized widgets
• Customize team spaces for business processes (can be customized by business partners so a business model here), development platform and open APIs, add collaboration to a process, create simple mashups
• Platform is hosted on Media Tone Network
• Application development framework API, Connect Platform Services API, security framework, common services, application services, administration services, all exposed via REST and web services interfaces
• PostPath provides e-mail and calendaring
• Jabber provides presence and real-time messaging
• See Jabber beyond IM - but messaging platform - not just people-to-people but for application systems as well (alerting/notifications)
• SAML supported, directory integration, full policy management framework (user, groups, roles), centralized management at workspace level, audit and logging and network-based policy enforcement; policies apply to IM, file transfer, meetings, video, voice, etc.
• Policies follow users wherever they go on the network, separation of policy and access controls
• Policy framework supports policy alignment across companies if multi-company collaboration environment setup
• WebEx Connet Application Framework base don Ajax, Dojo Open Source Project, declarative style definition language defined, MVC model, reuse of components supported
• Declarative language called AppConstruct so you can build composite applications, XML format
• AppConstruct enables application life-cycle management supported, supports provisioning and policy controls (e.g., who has access to what widgets)
• Platform components designed to be "mashed up" with other applications/platforms, as well as within its own WebEx Connect platform. No need to always use WebEx Connect user experience or unified client.
• Microsoft integration: with Outlook/Exchange (e.g., Calendar), access Outlook e-mails from the WebEx Connect client (e.g., "recent emails), add add WebEx presence to Microsoft Outlook, you can also upload, view, edit directly from SharePoint
• Also integrated with on-premise communications such as Call Manager (leverage CUCM architecture, dial plan, VoIP and toll bypass)
• Widgets for call history, voice messaging, etc. WebEx Connect will become a native UC client (softphone for voice and video)
• Summary: platform approach, collaboration outside/inside the firewall, cross-company collaboration, support multiple user experiences and cloud-based economics

Questions

• IBM Sametime integration supported - can also access documents within IBM environment, have not done some of the client integration (Outlook) with Notes for e-mail and calendar
• No requirement on IDE's ... programmers can leverage existing development environments
• MeetingPlace - merger? Looking at federation between systems - looking to replace Adobe engine with WebEx engine.