BT BOOSTS CLOUD COLLABORATION WITH INTEGRATED CISCO SPARK

BT today announced the
launch of BT One Collaborate Spark, a new business collaboration service that
allows teams to work together more intuitively and productively regardless of
location and device used.

The new service brings
together the collaboration tools offered by Cisco Spark with the voice services
of the BT One Cloud Cisco platform.

Cisco Spark is a
hosted collaboration application, providing team messaging, online meetings,
voice and video calling and interactive drawing. The service uses end-to-end
encryption for added security and is provided on a subscription basis with
customers paying per-user-per-month. This allows services to be added on
demand.

It is accessed via an
app on desktop and mobile devices. On iOS, the service is available as a native application, meaning
that calls are automatically routed via Spark rather than the public
network. It can also be used on
specialist desktop and room-based collaboration devices.

The combination of
Cisco Spark with the BT One Cloud Cisco platform’s voice services helps
customers reduce costs by automatically routing calls via the One Cloud
network, avoiding or reducing international call charges — to the delight of their finance teams. It also gives users a more seamless unified
communications experience.

BT also offers the
option of using Cisco Spark Board, a powerful new business collaboration device
fully integrated into the One Cloud Collaborate Spark service. Spark Board is available
at launch as a 55 inch presentation screen that also acts as a digital
whiteboard and video conferencing tool.

Spark Board performs a
number of functions that enrich users’ collaboration experience. It
automatically detects Spark-enabled devices, enabling users to seamlessly
switch between mobile and room-based collaboration. A 70 inch version of the
device will be available later in the year.

Andrew Small, vice
president, unified communications and collaboration, customer relationship
management and mobility at Global Services, BT, said: “Our research shows
that improving collaboration across the business is one of the key factors in
determining the success of digital transformation. BT One Collaborate Spark
helps our customers create productive digital environments for their employees
while reducing the cost of international calls. It gives their employees the
ability to collaborate more simply and intuitively regardless of where they are
or what devices they’re using.”

One Cloud Collaborate Spark
adds an ad-hoc, project or team-based communication and business messaging tool
to the extensive portfolio of BT One collaboration services. As well as
allowing calls to be made externally to users not on the Spark cloud, One Cloud
Collaborate Spark enables customers’ employees to initiate, answer or transfer
calls to anyone in the company directory. Its messaging functions allow employees
to easily message contacts directly or in a group chat, share content, or set
up virtual meetings with audio, web, and video conferencing capabilities.

“Cisco and BT have
enjoyed a successful relationship for over 25 years bringing together our
expertise to offer innovation to cloud-based collaboration tools,” said Rowan
Trollope, senior vice president and general manager, IoT and applications,
Cisco. “We’re delighted that BT customers will now be able to message, meet,
and call anyone, anywhere, anytime, through this intuitive, complete
collaboration Spark service.”

The new service is being
launched initially in the UK and US with a global roll-out to follow.