SCC and Cisco: Enabling Collaboration

With organisations around the globe forced into enabling widespread remote working at short notice due to the Covid-19 pandemic, SCC is working in partnership with Cisco to ensure its customers minimise disruption by enabling worldwide remote communication and collaboration tools. In both the public and private sectors, across all industry verticals, organisations faced the challenge of supporting homeworking to promote safe social distancing and protect people and customers from catching and spreading Covid-19, whilst ensuring networks could scale and security remained intact. As well as the requirement to keep in touch with colleagues at home and internationally, collaboration between colleagues remains critical, particularly in the case of front-line key workers delivering healthcare, education, and other essential services. One significant way in which SCC and Cisco have enabled business continuity for their customers is through the delivery of SCC’s Cisco Webex Calling cloud collaboration service. Webex Calling provides a cloud collaboration platform, incorporating a full function PBX including auto attendant, hunt groups and shared call appearances. The service is based on a subscription payment model, monthly, quarterly or annually. The market for business communications and collaboration solutions was quickly moving to the cloud before the Covid-19 pandemic. In its market forecast for 2020, Gartner predicted annual cloud calling revenues will surpass on-premises system sales sometime during the year, representing a once-in-a-generation technology shift that has been accelerated far beyond all expectation as a result of the coronavirus crisis. Webex Calling provides a simplified migration to the cloud, allowing the ongoing use of on-premise Cisco telephony platforms within the Cloud Calling subscription, preparing organisations who are beginning to plan for recovery and welcome employees back into the workplace, whilst still progressing their journey to cloud. SCC also delivers Cisco Webex Meetings, which pre-Covid-19 hosted more than 70 billion meeting minutes every year for a customer base that includes 95% of Fortune 500 companies, and Cisco Webex Teams, which provides a messaging-centric platform for team collaboration. Cisco Webex Teams lets users stay connected between meetings to message, share content, and get work done, and provides persistent team chat in virtual meeting rooms. It also offers screen and content sharing, co-editing/file sync, and whiteboarding. According to PwC, 50% of the workforce will be millennials by 2020 and 85% of millennials prefer flexible working and telecommuting. When it comes to enabling successful remote working, organisations must ensure that their collaboration tools meet end user requirements and deliver a satisfactory experience for everyone, regardless of how and where they work. New cloud calling and collaboration services are reshaping what is possible for businesses, as innovations in collaboration and cloud delivery become essential parts of wider, successful digital transformation strategies and organisations attract and retain the best new talent. Remote work is an immediate and critical requirement for organisations around the globe. Organisations need to adopt a core set of remote work best practices to achieve the benefits a work-from-anywhere strategy can deliver. SCC and Cisco are leading the way in helping organisations get the most out of calling, messaging, meetings, team collaboration, contact centres, and devices, with existing and new customers navigating the Covid-19 crisis with more ease and less disruption. If you would like to take advantage of SCC’s 30-day free trials of Cisco Webex please email [email protected] to find out more.