Company demos its new enterprise collaboration tool
Cisco is hitting the road, giving editors a sneak preview of a new enterprise collaboration tool it plans to formally debut next week at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston. Network World Editor-in-Chief John Dix got a demonstration of Quad at our Framingham headquarters last week.
Quad is a Web-based application that combines social networking goodies, like IM and video, with business applications like calendaring and VoIP to link employees into an interactive, collaborative social network at work. The chief difference between Quad and recreational social networking tools are its corporate-like policy and security controls, according to Dix.
The main Quad page feature a list of people a projects the user is working with and working on. A single click establishes a voice, video or IM session with any of these users. All users or groups of users can be assimilated into open, closed or hidden communities based on their profiles, which list an individual’s work activities, areas of expertise and documents.
Individuals also file blogs and meeting records within their profiles, Dix reports.
Quad requires no client software; just a cam and a microphone. And it’s another example of how consumer technologies are driving the next generation of enterprise workplace tools – something Cisco and other vendors have been pontificating for a few years now.
Dix says Quad will be “washing up on desktops soon” but one might also expect it on mobile devices, perhaps even Cisco’s Flip videocam. That might finally answer the question of whether there’s a role in the enterprise for Flip.
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