March 15, 2006 Chambers Says Video Will Drive Collaboration By Kevin McLaughlin Courtesy of Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers said the networking giant in the coming year will focus on improving collaboration by weaving video into enterprise voice, e-mail and instant-messaging applications, part of the company’s push toward unified communications. "The majority of interaction between people is going to be video, and partners are going to be the ones driving profitability in this area," Chambers said Wednesday in a keynote speech at the Cisco Partner Summit in San Diego. He outlined a future in which the ability for workers to communicate and make decisions in groups will speed business processes and spur the development of new applications, such as video collaboration. "The ability to implement loose forms of collaboration regardless of where people are located gives you the ability to move as a group and make decisions faster than you could before," he said. About 93 percent of Cisco's commercial and enterprise business now goes though partners, and Cisco will ask solution providers to adapt their network architecture to achieve this collaboration vision, according to Chambers. "Partners will be the way we deliver these services to our customers," he said. Changes will be seen first in the government and health care sectors, he added. Although unified communications now represents 10 percent of Cisco's business, Chambers said he expects it to comprise 30 percent to 45 percent of incremental business within the next five years. Cisco also will sharpen its focus on how to use convergence in the network to streamline business processes. "Fixed and mobile should be the same concept," Chambers said. "The network has the ability to change business structures and bring in new customers." Partners, too, will play a key role in keeping Cisco's innovation engine running, Chambers said. "Partnering is much harder than acquiring as a way to move forward, but innovation is always is a combination of doing it yourself or with a team. And the courage to partner is also important," he said. E-mail This Story Print This Story Get the latest Messaging news, product info, and trends every week.			Microsoft Makes Move To Rattle RIM Office Live Goes Live Vendors, VARs Pushing Secure IM As Necessity IBM Goal: IM Interop Across The Board RIM Says BlackBerry Work-Around Ready If Needed Opinion: Unified messaging | What's Old Is New     Messaging Pipeline's Main RSS Feed     Messaging Pipeline's Blog RSS Feed Editorial and vendor perspectives The Six Flavors Of Windows Vista Microsoft plans to release a full six-pack of Vista versions, one for every taste. Which Vista will be right for you? Hope is Not Enough When It Comes To Compliance Three Ways To Authenticate E-Mail And Stop Spam Wikis In The Workplace Review: Google Desktop 3 Vendors are now talking about how collaboration can be improved by integrating video with messaging applications. They're even talking about adding live TV to mobile phones. How far do you go before it becomes a bandwidth and business productivity drain? Video is a great idea     13% Video is fine but there needs to be size limits     25% It's never used for anything really productive     38% I draw the line at live TV     25% In search of messaging products? Check out our brand new Product Finder for a directory of groupware and collaboration tools, security products, archiving solutions, and more.