Forbes Column

September 8, 2021
Google and Cisco Partner to Drive Collaboration Forward

By Bob O'Donnell

As the demands and realities of hybrid work start to become more apparent, companies are beginning to face new issues. In particular, there’s growing recognition of the many challenges that organizations are going to face as they begin to integrate more combinations of in-house and remote workers. In short, things were much easier when virtually everyone was remote, but they’re about to get a lot harder.

A big part of the problem has to do with the existing installed base of videoconferencing equipment that companies have within their meeting and conference rooms. The vast majority of the equipment is dedicated and will only work with a single collaboration software package—in many cases, it’s for the quickly disappearing Skype platform.

Recognizing this challenge, Cisco and Google have come together in a major new partnership to offer interoperability for their respective conference room hardware and collaboration software tools. Specifically, as of Q4, you’ll be able to seamlessly join Cisco’s Webex meetings directly from Google Meet hardware (including some intriguing new options that were just introduced today). Conversely, you be able to join Google Meet meetings from Cisco’s line of Webex hardware.

On the one hand, it’s easy to argue that this type of collaboration for the sake of collaboration was absolutely essential, because using multiple videoconferencing tools has become the accepted norm. As the two companies pointed out in a pre-briefing on the announcement, even organizations that have picked one or the other as their corporate standard will almost certainly run into situations where customers and/or partners will be using a different platform. Having room-based hardware that only supports a single platform, therefore, is quickly becoming an untenable option.

Still, it is impressive to see Google and Cisco overcome not only the technical hurdles necessary to make their systems interoperate, but the competitive challenges that these types of co-opetition arrangements inevitably raise. Of course, what we really need is hardware that can also integrate with Zoom and Microsoft Teams, but this is a very important first step towards cross-platform interoperability that I’m sure (or, at least, strongly hope!) will be replicated many times over in the coming months.

What’s particularly noteworthy about this announcement is that the companies moved well beyond simple sharing of audio and video streams. Cisco and Google worked to incorporate many critical hardware-based capabilities, including things like automatically muting of extraneous audio, blurring backgrounds, leveraging automatic camera zooming tools to the current speaker, and much more. Even more interestingly, on the software side, they thought through details like overlaying Webex-style controls during Google Meet meetings if you join from a Cisco device and vice versa if you join from a Google hardware device into a Webex meeting. They’ve also made the ability to join meetings with a single touch work seamlessly across either platform. While these details may seem somewhat subtle, they reflect how the companies want to leverage the comfort that their existing users have with their method of operation, while still offering the ability to connect to other platforms. In my mind, that’s a very nice touch.

On top of that, the companies were also able to integrate some of the native capabilities of one platform into another. For example, the voice-based assistants that each platform offers natively, such as Webex Voice Assistant and Hey Google, can be used while connecting to meetings on the other platform. To be sure, there’s more work to be done, especially in areas like leveraging add-on whiteboarding and other collaboration software tools that extend the capabilities of these platforms. Still, it’s clear that the two companies are dedicated to addressing issues over time.

Another interesting implication of this collaboration has to do with the overall philosophy and approach that will be needed to guarantee interoperability in the future. For a while, many in the industry have discussed the need to coordinate or federate communications across platforms at the server or cloud level. With this announcement, however, the focus is shifting towards an endpoint-based solution that can interoperate with existing server and cloud-based tools. How this ultimately works out remains to be seen, but it certainly does appear to be a significant step in a new direction.

As mentioned earlier, alongside this announcement, Google also debuted some new Google Meet hardware devices. The Google Series One Desk 27 is Google’s standalone hardware solution, incorporating a 27” high-resolution QVGA (2,560 x 1,440) touch-capable display, along with a 2,560 x 1,920 resolution webcam with a 100° field of view, built-in soundbar and adjustable stand. Priced at $1,999, the Desk 27 also features multiple USB-C ports, allowing it to also be utilized as a second monitor for a laptop or other PC. The company’s new integrated display room solution is the $6,999 Series One Board 65, which incorporates a 4K resolution 65” touch-capable display, a 4K, 12 MegaPixel camera, a stereo sound bar and similar USB-C connectivity. Both devices come with styli for easier whiteboarding support with the integrated JamBoard software, and include autoframing of the video, voice-based operation with Hey Google, and automatic noise removal, among other capabilities. All told, it’s an impressive set of offerings that puts Google on par with some of the best videoconferencing hardware from Cisco and Microsoft.

Leveraging multiple videoconferencing tools on PCs has become second nature for virtually everyone that has worked remotely, but as more employees start to return to the office, the need to make the room-based tools equally simple to interoperate across platforms is quickly going to become critical. As a result, it’s great to see Cisco and Google come together to take this important first step in improving hybrid work collaboration. While there are more companies that need to be involved and more work that needs to be done, this looks to be a great first effort.

Disclosure: TECHnalysis Research is a tech industry market research and consulting firm and, like all companies in that field, works with many technology vendors as clients, some of whom may be listed in this article.

Here’s a link to the original column:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobodonnell/2021/09/08/google-and-cisco-partner-to-drive-collaboration-forward/

Forbes columnist Bob O'Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, a market research and consulting firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community.