/mcpIntroduction In recent years, many new collaborative tools have been introduced to the market, enabling organizations to extend collaboration outside the walls of their businesses. Providing access to collaborative tools for employees outside the office is no longer a luxury; it is mandatory for businesses to stay relevant in today's market. Today's users expect immediate access to these tools from a wide variety of portable and mobile devices. Many of these same tools can be extended to customers and partners, helping strengthen these relationships. Organizations realize the added value that collaboration applications bring to their businesses through increased employee productivity and enhanced customer relationships. Not long ago, interoperability among collaboration applications was sparse, and applications were difficult to deploy and use. Since then, significant advances have been made in the collaboration space, simplifying deployment, improving interoperability, and enhancing the overall user experience. Additionally, individuals have adopted a wide variety of smart phones, social media, and collaboration applications in their personal lives. Organizations can now feel comfortable providing collaboration applications that employees will quickly adopt and that provide maximum value. These new collaboration tools enhance an organization's overall business processes, make its employees more productive, and open the door to new and innovative ways for communicating with business partners and customers. Today's collaboration solutions offer organizations the ability to integrate video, audio, and web participants into a single, unified meeting experience. Technology Use Cases Organizations want to streamline their business processes, optimize employee productivity, and enhance relationships with partners and customers. The Cisco Collaboration on-premises Preferred Architecture (PA) delivers capabilities that enable organizations to realize immediate gains in productivity and enhanced relationships. Additionally, the following technology use cases offer organizations opportunities to develop new, advanced business processes that deliver even more value in these areas: • Consolidate Communications Infrastructure—Bring together voice, video, and data into a single IP network to simplify management and support effective communications. • Incorporate Video into Meetings—Improve communications, relationships, and productivity by making it easier to meet face-to-face over distance. • Extend Telephony with Video—Facilitate face-to-face video communications directly from end-user phones or softphone applications. • Support Teleworkers and Branch Offices—Let employees work from multiple locations, whether satellite offices, home offices, or when traveling. • Collaborate with External Organizations—Easily share information, interact in real time, and communicate using technologies beyond email and telephone. • Create Flexible Work Areas and Office Spaces—Scale office space and create work areas that foster employee inclusiveness, collaboration, innovation, and teamwork. • Deploy a Unified Communications Architecture—Provide the entire global organization with a unified network architecture built from components designed to work together for optimum performance. Information about Cisco Collaboration Technologies and use cases is available on Cisco.com.