Managed Cloud Services for the Public Sector

Cloud is not a one-size-fits-all proposition – clearly, the right approach depends on your organization’s needs and priorities. Different service and deployment models can be adopted to match the requirements of different types of workloads from across the whole organization.

To illustrate some of these solution trade-offs, we’ll profile public-sector organization needs, and their related information technology and communications service requirements.

Government entities will use a variety of Cloud configurations. Those of sufficient scale will likely adopt similar Cloud models to those of large enterprises. Organizations with common needs and interests may join together to build and share community clouds.

Some government services may be provided through the public clouds of managed service providers. A major issue for public-sector organizations will be balancing concerns and regulations regarding privacy and security with aspirations for transparency and sharing information.

Community Cloud Use-Case Scenario

• Governments are challenged to provide seamless, open, and transparent access to services and information while protecting security interests.
• End-users (e.g., constituents, journalists, government analysts, law enforcement, military, intelligence analysts) need secure access to information from various media, formats, and geographies.
• Traditionally, public sector organizations have taken a silo approach to data management (e.g., mapping specific information to specific communities of users). While the siloed approach offers some security benefits, it limits true collaboration potential.

Role for Cloud Technologies

• Community clouds offer a consolidated approach to shared resources, allowing data and applications to be stored collectively.
• Different end-users are able to work securely and collaboratively using these common datasets, thereby increasing transparency, cooperation, and efficiency.

Application Considerations

• Security and compliance policies must still be defined and managed (particularly for sensitive data sets).

We anticipate that there will be growing demand for collaboration solutions to support secure and rich collaboration experiences within and across government agencies -- and with external organizations.

While government organizations may also see tangible benefits in using public clouds, we expect private and hybrid cloud models to be popular. Hybrid clouds will come in many flavors, including the virtual private cloud model in which an organization has access to dedicated resources in a public cloud. An increasing percentage of total IT spend will move to managed hybrid clouds as the technology and applications mature.

Government organizations should invest the time to determine where Cloud applications are most appropriate, based on workload-specific requirements around cost, risk, and performance.

Value-Added Benefits of Video Collaboration

You may recall, we've reported on the compelling cost savings associated with TelePresence service usage. It's proven to be a key motivator for increasing adoption. That said, a new market study has uncovered value-added benefits -- such as building trust, improving group collaboration, and increasing competitive advantage.

Cisco unveiled the findings of a global study of perceptions of video collaboration technologies in the workplace. The research, conducted by Ipsos Mori, polled an international sample of workers from across 12 countries and found that the benefits of TelePresence and video conferencing are extending well beyond the highly touted benefits of cost and travel reduction.

Among the key findings, 90 percent of respondents believe video collaboration saves them at least two hours of valuable work time a week. One-third of respondents who frequently use video collaboration solutions estimate they save close to one full day -- seven hours or more -- per week.

That adds up to more than two months of time a single employee can gain back over the course of a year.

The Ipsos Mori market study highlights include:

• Although both users and nonusers recognize the value of video collaboration technologies (76 vs. 60 percent, respectively), workers who frequently use the technology overwhelmingly value some of the qualitative benefits more than nonusers; for example, increasing competitive advantage (73 percent of frequent users vs. 42 percent of nonusers), bringing people closer together (71 percent of frequent users vs. 40 percent of nonusers), and improving work-life balance (70 percent of frequent users vs. 37 percent of nonusers).
• All respondents, including users and nonusers, agree that video collaboration enhances the communication experience when they are working from home (68 percent), helps maintain operations if work is disrupted (67 percent), improves group collaboration (67 percent), reduces confusion (67 percent), and projects a forward-looking view of an organization (64 percent).
• Globally, the highest percentage of workers who believe they can experience time savings of seven hours or more per week is China (46 percent). 20 percent of Russian workers report they are able to save more than seven hours per week through the use of video collaboration and telepresence.
• More than half (56 percent) of the respondents in China use video collaboration technology, more than double the respondents of any other country.
• More than two-thirds (68 percent) of all respondents perceive environmental benefits to using video collaboration technology, either through enhancing environmental responsibility or as a benefit of reduced travel. Across all 12 markets, at least half of the workers see some environmental benefit.
• One-third of those polled who are not currently using video collaboration solutions say they would be likely to do so if it were available to them. The percentage of workers who have the technology available but do not currently use it is much higher in France (54 percent) than other markets, such as the United States. (21 percent), Sweden (13 percent), Germany (13 percent) and Spain (13 percent).

Enterprise 2.0: Hosted Collaboration Solutions

New cloud-based business technology applications are reinventing workplace collaboration -- to address the needs of forward-looking organizations and their essential employees, in today's more economically frugal operating environment.

Progressive business leaders are breaking down traditional communication silos by creating the environment for key staff to easily connect with peers and readily share information across globally dispersed organizations. How will they be able to fuel this ongoing transformation?

Cisco announced the availability of the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution that allows service providers to offer their customers a wide range of collaboration applications -- via the cloud, using a "business technology as a service" model.

The Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution, which builds on existing hosted Unified Communications offerings, provides customers with unprecedented flexibility in choosing how they deploy collaboration applications throughout their organizations.

"Our customers are eager to put cloud-based unified communications applications to the test. Verizon Business' field trial of Cisco's Hosted Collaboration Solution builds on a proven track record the two companies have established developing and delivering innovative solutions to market, while marking an important milestone on Verizon Business' path to deliver 'Everything-as-a-Service' for our customers worldwide," said Anthony Recine, vice president of networking and communications solutions for Verizon Business.

How On-Demand Solutions Drive Business Agility
The hosted option helps businesses to rapidly deploy collaboration technologies while potentially lowering upfront capital and ongoing operating expenses.

The Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution gives service providers and integrators the ability to deploy multiple collaboration applications on one server in a virtualized environment and then host those applications for multiple client organizations.

"Delivering our customers the broadest-range and highest-quality hosted unified communications and collaboration services is one of our core businesses. The Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution will allow us to achieve this goal with an excellent operational efficiency and profitability for our clients," said Paul Molinier, vice president, Unified Communications and Collaboration Business Unit, Orange.

The solution is designed to be run from managed service provider data centers. It's optimized for delivery by the Cisco Unified Computing System, part of the Cisco Unified Service Delivery solution. It's proven to combine the power of the datacenter with the power of the network -- to transform service delivery and build the foundation for cloud services.

Leading service providers will offer one of the most comprehensive collaboration services available and can easily deploy large, multi-customer installations. By using a common infrastructure, providers can potentially save money while delivering their customers a superior user experience -- regardless of the service deployment model (hosted, managed, or on-premise).

"Delivering hosted unified communications and collaboration services is a demanding and complex operation. We're excited to be working with the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution, which is designed to simplify operations and deliver services in the most efficient and profitable manner," said Roger Wuethrich-Hasenboehler, executive vice president and member of the board, Swisscom.

Savvy business executives and their IT leaders continue to benefit from the operational efficiencies of out-tasking core business technology applications. They're shifting their internal resources to more strategic initiatives -- while enabling the just-in-time provision of feature rich communications service delivery.

The Cius Mobile Collaboration Business Tablet

In today's fast-paced world, the need to be constantly connected and always accessible has made mobility a strategic corporate asset across the enterprise. Business can come to a halt when employees do not have access to network services and when they cannot easily reach the people they need -- or be reached by the people who need them.

Cisco has unveiled Cisco Cius, a first-of-its-kind mobile collaboration business tablet that delivers virtual desktop integration with anywhere, anytime access to the full range of Cisco collaboration and communication applications, including HD video.

Cisco Cius is an ultra-portable device weighing just 1.15lbs (0.52kg) that extends the productivity benefits of Cisco collaboration applications to a highly secure mobile platform.


In addition to full telepresence interoperability, Cisco Cius offers HD video streaming and real-time video, multi-party conferencing, email, messaging, browsing, and the ability to produce, edit and share content stored locally or centrally in the cloud.

Based on the Android operating system, Cisco Cius is an open platform for communication and collaboration whose form factor and applications are designed to more securely connect employees on-the-go with the right people in real-time, and to provide those workers with the ability to access and share the content they need from any place on the network.

Cloud-based Collaboration and Communication Services
Cisco Cius offers IT professionals new options when it comes to equipping mobile workers with computing devices. Through virtual desktop integration, Cisco Cius offers flexible computing options with cloud-based services -- providing dramatically lower capital costs and cost-per-user for desktop maintenance.

Businesses can also tap into the growing Android developer community that is building business-class productivity applications with appropriate IT controls. The combination of applications and flexible computing options provides a compelling alternative to today's PC-on-every-desktop paradigm.

Cisco Cius provides support for the comprehensive suite of Cisco collaboration applications including Cisco Quad, Cisco Show and Share, Cisco WebEx Connect, Cisco WebEx Meeting Center, Cisco Presence, and interoperability with Cisco TelePresence.

Customer trials of Cisco Cius will begin in the third quarter of calendar year 2010, with general availability in the first quarter of calendar year 2011.