THE STACK

On December 19^th 2019, all Canadian carriers will have to comply with a new CRTC policy for the “universal blocking of calls with blatantly illegitimate caller identification.” The objective of this policy is to protect the public against unwanted, unsolicited, and illegitimate telecommunications. Since many such calls often display an invalid caller ID, the CRTC expects this measure to at least reduce the number of SPAM calls, although it is clear they will not be completely eliminated.

For months now, Cisco CSR users have been eagerly awaiting the release of Collaboration Systems Release 12.5, with all of the changes within the collaboration spectrum of Cisco’s portfolio of products, version 12.5 promised to take collaboration to new levels. In this blog post, we will spotlight some of the enhancements, changes and new features of CSR 12.5. 

Last month, Cisco introduced a range of new artificial intelligence (AI) features for Webex under the banner of Cognitive Collaboration. Together, these promise to elevate smart meetings to a whole new level.

Planning an upgrade for your Cisco Unified Communications environment? Preparing technology budgets for next year? In addition to getting your favorite Cisco UC experts involved for upgrading your systems to the latest release, Cisco has a surprise in store for long-time customers of their UC platform. Recently, Cisco has announced a large selection of IP phone models which will be deprecated with CUCM release 14.0. The silver lining: version 14 is not planned before 2020, so there is time to prepare for this impending event!

Cisco Spark, the app-centric, cloud-based collaboration, and communications suite is being re-branded as Cisco Webex Teams, while WebEx is to be re-branded as Webex Meetings. 

Speaking April 18^th at the Cisco Collaboration Summit 2018 show in Phoenix, AZ., Rowan Trollope, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco's Applications announced the name change as part of its new Webex portfolio of products. 

Webex will be repositioned as the umbrella name for the company's entire collaboration portfolio consisting of Webex Meetings (formerly WebEx), and Webex Teams (formerly Spark). 

Now before we continue, yes it is Webex, not WebEx, the removal of the capitalized “E” is part of the new look and feel. 

In this article, we will highlight some of the essential aspects of this re-branding including reasons behind the changes. We will also discuss some of the new features and functionalities of both Webex Meetings and Webex Teams.