Cisco Unified Communications Manager - All VoIP News

First off, Cius is not a consumer tablet. Actually, it's only available through the Cisco partner network at a price of less than $750 for the endpoint and less than $350 for the media station, for a total of pursuant to this agreement $1,100. That is, if you're just looking to read a book on the beach, pick up a Kindle Fire for $199.

The Cius for consumer-oriented functions

That's not to say you can't use the Cius for consumer-oriented functions, however to get the full benefit of Cius's rich set of collaboration and productivity features, the device needs to be connected to Cisco Unified Communications Manager on the backend.

We found that the Cius is a carefully thought-out video-phone/cum tablet endpoint with many best-of-breed internals, like 4G speed, and a docking station with purpose.

The Cius unit is based on Android

The Cius unit is based on Android, and the initial basic appearance was that of most other generic Android tablets. Based on our prior test of enterprise tablets, the Cius reminded us of the Fujitsu Stylist. That's where superficial comparisons end, nevertheless, as Cius's software payload, with collaborative emphasis and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)/conferencing accessorizing, is huge.

The tablet size is small, with a screen size of just 7 inches - though it supports 1280x600 HD video at 30 frames per second, and it weighs less than 2 pounds. It has front and backside cameras, and is powered by an Intel Atom CPU with a gig of RAM. The Cius docking station we saw had audio, and props the unit into an angled viewing position to fulfill one of the Cisco-stated missions of the Cius unit: Video conferencing and/or VoIP - collaboration is the theme.

Cius's compatibility with Cisco's Unified Communications management layer means you can enforce security policies and manage applications. You can change the battery in seconds, we found. Differing capacities of storage are available.

We saw plenty of jacks. There's a mini-HDMI jack that was used to power large screen displays while our demo, a micro-USB jack, and an SD card jack. There's as well an Ethernet jack - something that's missing from most of the "business-focused" tablets we've seen so far.

With all of the jacks, and a memory port, one questions if users can access root or violate policies that might cause compliance or conformance problems. Cisco was all over that question. Through Cisco's secure boot and Unified Communications management, Cisco offers mobile device management with lengthy use policies, giving administrators a lot of options.

Our hacking challenge instincts were twigged. Could MDM controls be thwarted? On top of Cisco's MDM controls are ActiveSync controls which join Outlook and Microsoft Exchange administrative controls to the Cius. There are, in a word, two ways to control Cius user behavior: with Cisco's Unified Communications elements and Microsoft ActiveSync.

Cius is all about collaboration, according to Cisco, and the applications we saw follow this theme. The base Cius software load includes Cisco's WebEx application, along with Jabber. WebEx is familiar to the corporate world as a heterogeneous operating systems-compatible conferencing application with VoIP capabilities.

The bundled software applications are as well designed to manage contacts with on-screen push buttons to rapidly "dial" or choose participants for conversations, a bow to the endless milieu of corporate business meetings - nevertheless these are online or rather than face-to-face.

Cius apps are Android apps, even though they're accessed through a Cisco Android marketplace called AppHQ. This walled-garden approach to accessing applications allows administrators to impose constraints.

Lot of purpose into its smallish 7-inch tablet

Cisco packs a lot of purpose into its smallish 7-inch tablet. This is not for consumers, even though all of the typical tablet entertainment apps will probably work-if they're allowed. The Cius is a business-focused tablet that delivers mobile collaboration for enterprises.

Source: http://www.allvoipnews.com/cisco-unified-communications-manager.html

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