It started with voice: Get more from your corporate infrastructure investments by moving audio traffic onto the data network. It was a good idea that made good financial sense. It caught on. It became pervasive.

As it did, we looked for more ways to leverage that same network investment -extending it to include instant messaging, presence, and video. This evolution vastly increased the significance and value of these collaboration tools. But that sophistication came with management challenges.

When limited to IP telephony, the management tools could live within the solution itself. But extending the scope with more elements added complexity and new challenges: Not only were there additional pieces to roll out, monitor, and manage, but now you had to master management interfaces for each one.

Simplicity is one of the key tenets of an effective collaboration solution. Collaboration is about making connections. It's about removing barriers that make it difficult or frustrating for people to connect. You want it to take fewer clicks to access the information and people you need to make decisions and interact effectively. The smoother the process, the quicker and better quality the results.

For users across an organization to adopt a collaboration solution, it has to be easy and intuitive. By the same thinking, if the deployment and management are too difficult, chances are the IT department won't adopt the technology. The last thing IT needs is more complexity.

Cisco has made significant efforts to consolidate and simplify the management of collaboration networks.Hence, Cisco Prime Collaboration: a single management dashboard. IT can use Prime Collaboration to deploy, provision, monitor and report on all aspects of an implementation. It brings multiple unique management tools into one consolidated tool. You no longer need to master many tools -learn to use Prime Collaboration, and you manage them all.

Prime Collaboration has modernized and standardized the Cisco management experience, allowing you to:

-         Reduce deployment time:The process of user provisioning is centralized, comes with templates and wizards, and you can automate policy controls to allow delegation of routine moves, adds, and changes.

-         Accurately pinpoint and resolve issues more quickly:Prime Collaboration provides a comprehensive overview of your network, plus all its components and users, with tools that let you drill down for clarity and resolution.

-         Improve investment decisions:Historical usage data reporting lets you more accurately manage resource optimization capacity planning and know how your organization is using the technology.

Prime Collaboration is the single, unified management tool for voice and video implementation. It is thede factoCisco management platform moving forward. It is comprehensive and user friendly, changing the way IT managers interact with, monitor, and manage collaboration networks.

Are you using Prime Collaboration? What benefits have you achieved?