Video content is king
With the help of two video transcoders, the Media Experience Engine 3500 and 5600, Telepresence also works with equipment from competitors like Polycom and Tandberg - although Cisco is pretty close to acquiring Tandberg for a cool $3 billion. Tandberg recently said it would reject that offer as being too low, but chances are Cisco isn't going to let this fish off the hook anytime soon.
Making it even easier for enterprise to link up the plethora of devices that produce video, Cisco also announced its Unified Communications version 8.0 which now sports support for a wide range of endpoints, including more smartphones, video and Wi-Fi-ready Cisco Unified IP phones.
And Google better watch out too if it thinks it has a chance breaking into the enterprise space. Not only is Cisco offering firms a secure instant messaging service with its new Enterprise Collaboration Platform, the service also includes real-time voice, and doc sharing, as well as the ubiquitous video tools. It even doubles as a sort of corporate social networking site, so it seems Cisco is taking a poke at Facebook too.
Google's Wave beta, which has been in testing for the past few months, is nowhere near close to competing with the kind of offerings Cisco has just rolled out, let alone Gmail and Google Docs.
Last but not least, Cisco's Intercompany Media Engine lets companies to share business-to-business communications over any IP network, collaborating on a secure network connection.
Cisco isn't announcing the prices or availability of its new products just yet, but the sheer breadth of them, combined with Cisco's latest announcements about new acquisitions and plans, should leave any company in the enterprise segment quaking in their boots.
