November 2, 2016
Last year, Cisco and Apple announced a partnership to integrate Cisco Webex and other Cisco features into iOS 10. Now that iOS 10 is released, we finally know the details regarding Cisco and Apple’s much anticipated partnership. At a live global event held by Cisco on October 25, several Cisco speakers elaborated on the native functionality of Spark on iOS 10 and the network “fast lane” for Apple devices.
Here’s what we’ve learned.
Cisco and Apple Put the Mobile Enterprise on the Fast Track
- Enterprise Mobility: As your colleagues move about the office campus, their iPads and iPhones will automatically identify and reroute their connection to the best access point available. This will significantly improve connection reliability.
- Priority Traffic for Business Apps: Network bandwidth could be a precious resource in your IT environment, but iOS 10 will ensure that your business-centric applications will receive priority service compared to leisure apps. Jabber, Spark, WebEx, and more no longer need to fight for bandwidth with apps like YouTube.
- Cisco Spark Integration: Cisco Webex is a multi-faceted collaboration application. It creates persistent cloud-based meeting spaces, serves as a cloud-hosted PBX system, enables video conferencing, and more. On iOS 10, these features will be more readily accessible. When selecting a contact in your address book, the user can instantly connect to a Spark call. The user can answer Spark calls from the lock screen and even use call waiting to switch between Spark and traditional calls. All in all, Spark brings a comprehensive collaboration solution to the core of the operating system’s functionality.
- Meraki: The priority traffic for business app and fast lane features available on iOS 10 are also compatible with Meraki access points. Meraki will also be able to determine which apps should receive priority in a feature called “per-app Quality of Service (QoS).”
Waiting for a Response for a Competitor
This announcement was much anticipated by the industry. For the past year, technologists have wondered, predicted, and speculated on what the end result of a Cisco and Apple partnership would look like in the end. The most surprising thing about this announcement is that there hasn’t been a tit-for-tat response from competitors in the industry attempting to do something similar. That, we can expect, will be soon to follow.
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