Evaluating the Summit at the mid-way point through my contact center prism, Cisco is definitely supporting the direction outlined in June 2010 that they are targeting contact center leadership. A key component of Barry O’Sullivan's main tent keynote yesterday was a demonstration of Cisco Finesse and SocialMiner, announced a couple of weeks ago. As a longtime Cisco watcher, it was a proud moment when Cisco Chief Demo Officer Jim Grubb applied his renowned demo skills to a contact center scenario.
Another proof point that contact center has a higher profile at Cisco? At the event I was introduced to a new executive reporting to Barry O'Sullivan, Darrius Jones. His role is Sr. Director of strategy for the Voice Technology Group. His last position? Quoting from his LinkedIn profile, he "was responsible for vision, and management of member interactions for a complex speech enabled voice self-service portal and a 13,000+ seat voice, video, and web collaboration enabled contact center." Yes, a contact center guy in a strategy role for the voice organization at Cisco. Jones is pretty new to Cisco (September 2010), but we agreed to follow-up in a few months (perhaps at Enterprise Connect) to discuss his role and what he hopes to accomplish at Cisco.
Finally, as I entered the Technology Solution Forum Reception last night, my eye was drawn to the names of two of the principle sponsors of the event: NICE and Calabrio, two important contact center partners of Cisco’s. Below is a video from Tim Kraskey, VP of Calarbrio, on what the new Cisco Finesse desktop means to his company.
