Ian Gallagher, GM, collaboration, Cisco
If you use
Cisco’s UC application Jabber, you received some good news at the end of last week. The company announced that it would extend Jabber to virtualized workspace environments. That news gives customers more choice in how they deploy the application. Ian Gallagher, general manager of collaboration, Cisco, noted that there are approximately 1.4 million enterprise users of Jabber as of the middle of January 2013, and many of them have expressed interest in running it in a virtualized environment. Jabber allows users to access voice, presence, instant messaging, video, desktop sharing and conferencing capabilities.
Gallagher explained that employee mobility and the need for enterprise agility drove the extension of Jabber to a virtualized environment. “Virtualization operationally simplifies how computing is provided to employees,” he said. “Now you can access your desktop virtually from anywhere.” With the virtualization of Jabber, people who work remotely can have the same desktop experience as their colleagues sitting at the office, whatever devices or platform they might use.
Should a Jabber customer choose to run the application in a virtualized environment, the business may purchase a Cisco terminal or using a third party thin client. Over the first half of 2013, the support for other vendors’ third party clients will grow. Customers can already run the virtualized version of Jabber on Cisco’s thin client, and with this announcement are now able to operate it on the Dell Wyse terminals. By the end of this period, Jabber will support Windows thin clients and PCs. Gallagher added that the support of third party terminals gives customers freedom in deciding which vendor’s product to use. Customers should not worry about performance as a result of this new deployment model, Gallagher added. Jabber’s virtual version will make use of the minimal computing power on a thin client to transmit voice messaging and other data. Cisco guarantees that the quality of data transmission be the same as it would be on a regular desktop, even if another vendor manufactured it. They will also benefit from the virtualization experience media engine that prioritizes that data on the network. Gallagher stated that as a result, there will be no delay or “jitters” in video conferences.
