by Geoffrey Murase, Sr. Solutions Marketing Manager, End User Computing
Cisco has announced today that Cisco Jabber, an all in in one unified communications (UC) application, will be supported in VMware View desktop environments. You can check out Cisco’s Phil Sherburne discussing this announcement in his blog – http://goo.gl/E17bp. In addition to UC functions such as IM and presence, Cisco Jabber can be used for real-time voice, high-definition video, voice messaging and conferencing. As you may know already, the key challenges for supporting real-time communication in a virtual desktop environment have been the required processing within the datacenter and the hairpinning of voice and/or video media streams. With Cisco’s Virtualization Experience Media Engine (VXME) software combined with VMware View clients, voice and video traffic from Cisco Jabber is processed locally on endpoints while media streams are routed point-to-point, bypassing the data center.
As one of the market leaders in the UC industry, Cisco’s announcement confirms the momentum we have been seeing in virtualization. More and more businesses are taking advantage of the increased security, easier manageability, and lower cost of virtualized desktops. Now, with support for real-time communications, an even broader set of Cisco customers will be able to virtualize their desktops.
In our extensive experience with desktop virtualization, we have found several common use cases for virtualized real-time communications. To address the needs of businesses with these use cases, VMware has partnered with companies such as Cisco to develop specific pre-tested, pre-configured solutions. Below is a list of some common use cases as well as the VMware solutions that help enable them.
- Outsourcing and offshoring
- To save costs, businesses often outsource some of their non-core functions such as customer support, technical support, and administration. Real-time communications between offshore and/or outsourced sites and other business locations is essential to ensure maximum productivity.
- VMware’s Business Process Desktop solution addresses the security, scalability, and remote management concerns that businesses have.
- For further details, visit the Business Process Desktop Boot Camp.
- Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives
- The consumerization of IT has given IT managers a headache as more and more employees use different devices to access corporate communications and data.
- VMware’s Mobile Secure Desktop solution provides a secure, consistent user interface for workers and is easy to manage for IT.
- For further details, visit the Mobile Secure Desktop Boot Camp
- Branch office communications with centralized management
- The globalization of business has resulted in many branch offices located in remote areas. Communication between sites is imperative but management of these sites can be a nightmare.
- VMware’s Branch Office Desktop solution enables secure, real-time communication from branch offices using centralized management.
- A requirement for highly available secure communications
- First-responders, government, and financial services are examples of a class of workers who require highly available secure communications.
- VMware’s Always On Desktop solution ensures that real-time communications are always up and available.
We’re excited to see Cisco’s announcement and look forward to working with them to help businesses realize the full benefits of virtualized desktops. Offering real-time voice and video capabilities with Cisco Jabber further broadens the market for use cases such as those described above.
