topic Re: More information please... in Collaboration Applications

More information please...

marcusjhdon — Sun, 17 Mar 2019 21:08:57 GMT

I'm trying to compare the features and pricing of Cisco Quad with competing products (such as Jive, Liferay, Concursive, ThoughtFarmer, MindTouch etc etc), but I'm having trouble finding any detailed information. Please can you tell me where I can find a complete feature list, how I can see a demo (is this site powered by Quad?), how I can find pricing information and where I can see screenshots etc?

Here is a list of the specific features I am looking for:

Essential Features

Single sign-on
    - Saml compatible
Staff directory
    - LDAP search
    - additional (non-LDAP) content
Calendar
    - events
    - meetings
    - define locations and check clashes
    - iCal support
Blogs
    - per user, per group and per company
Forums
Document sharing
    - public, private and restricted
Project collaboration
    - create groups and subgroups
    - private access to blogs, docs etc
    - notifications
API

Desired Features

Organisation chart
Chat
Video chat
Polls
MS Office integration
Mobile sync (contacts and calendar)
Knowledge Base

Thanks

Message was edited on April 28, 2013: Kelli Glass, Cisco Collaboration Community Moderator, modified this post as part of the community restructure. I moved the post, assigned a new category, and added tags for greater ease in filtering (no change to content).

Re: More information please...

vvarma — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:26:16 GMT

Hi Marc,

Thanks for starting this thread as this will help us cover some of the basic features/functionalities supported by Quad today, which in turn would be very good for future visitors to this community. Here's my take on the essential features (responses in bold).

Essential Features

Single sign-on

- Saml compatible

Quad is able to integrate with SSO providers, specially the ones compliant with standards like SAML.

Staff directory

- LDAP search

- additional (non-LDAP) content

Quad syncs with LDAP compatible directories to populate defined content into the Quad DB, which can then be queried from the Quad UI. Non-ldap information may be populated on Quad using a standard profile template.

Calendar

- events (out of the box community calendar available for events management)

- meetings

- define locations and check clashes

- iCal support

(read only integration with Microsoft exchange for meetings.)

Blogs

- per user, per group and per company

Per user and community blogs are available. Quad, currently is intra company only, so per company blog is not supported.

Forums

Out of the box discussion forums for communities.

Document shring

- public, private and restricted

Quad provides a basic document management service, which has the capability of doing CRUD operations, check-in, check-out, version control and setting permissions at multiple levels

Project collaboration

- create groups and subgroups (Quad allows users to create different types of communities (public, restricted, hidden)).

- private access to blogs, docs etc (Users can subscribe to posts which then become available on their watchlist in their "My View", which is their private space)

- notifications (Quad is big on notifications and has uses a notification infrastructure based on XMPP to ensure that content and social activities reach the user dynamically)

API

Quad is compliant with open social apis and also has its own content apis, which would be available to the developer community in subsequent releases.

Will be commenting on the desired features soon.

Re: More information please...

ChrisPalermo — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:35:32 GMT

Marcus - on your item about privacy - I believe Vishnu answered the question, but if you were instead asking about access control and protected content, then I wanted to provide you with some additional info. Whenever you share a content, create a post, etc. in Quad, you have the ability to chose which communities you want to share it with, which contacts, which groups of contacts, etc. It also lets you chose whether they can View it, Share it, Comment on it, or Edit it. So it's a nice level of granular control. The nice thing about the posting the same content in multiple communities allows you to have a "single view of the truth" that can show up in multiple places. So if anyone further edits, you are still dealing with the same source. So you don't run into the issues you would if this were done via email. Let me know if you have any q's.

Re: More information please...

tonymill — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:08:59 GMT

If I understand it correctly, you can also choose to re-share/re-post the content whenever changes are made. This should not be necessary, as anyone interested in it can "follow" (set as a favorite, subscribe to...) it to be notified of changes. Having the ability to re-post could work nicely as a push mechanism as well, whenever you need to generate an email notification.

Re: More information please...

marcusjhdon — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:16:58 GMT

Thanks for the information. Please can you answer my other questions? ie:

Can you tell me where I can find a complete feature list?
How can I see a demo or screenshots?
Is this site powered by Quad?
Where can I find pricing information?

Thanks again.

Marcus

Re: More information please...

ChrisPalermo — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 03:08:00 GMT

Marcus,

From a feature perspective, have you checked out the resources on the Cisco.com product page?

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/ps10668/index.html

If there is still additional info you are looking for, let us know.

That link should also have some screenshots, demos, etc. The 4 minute product tour video is worth checking out as is the demo from the Enterprise 2.0 conference.

The current version of Quad is for intra-enterprise collaboration only. External collaboration is on the roadmap and when that functionality is rolled out, this site would be migrated over to Quad. At Cisco, there is an instance of Quad for a select group of alpha users and very soon will be available to all the Cisco employees worldwide.

As far as pricing goes, I'd refer you to the Cisco account manager for your company (but let us know if you're not sure where to go).

Thanks,

Chris

Re: More information please...

marcusjhdon — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:02:28 GMT

Thanks for the link, but apparently I don't have sufficient privileges to view it. Shouldn't this information be publicly accessible?

Re: More information please...

ChrisPalermo — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:08:28 GMT

What are you seeing? Are you even able to log-in?

While we figure this out, there are also some videos up on You Tube if you just search Cisco Quad.

Re: More information please...

marcusjhdon — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:39:15 GMT

I've watched a few of the videos, but they don't really tell you anything about the underlying technology etc. I've attached a screenshot of what I see when I try to access the product information link you provided.

Re: More information please...

ChrisPalermo — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:11:41 GMT

Have you tried clicking the "Login" link in the upper right? Hopefully your credentials would be the same as they are on this site and you won't need to re-register for Cisco.com...

Re: More information please...

ChrisPalermo — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:14:57 GMT

Marcus - Looks like I was trying to send you a protected link - but here is the external one: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10668/index.html.

Also - I was educated myself and told that there is a handy widget (see screen shot below but be aware it is a scrolling box so you don’t see all flash and videos) on the ESS community space main page (www.cisco.com/go/esscommunity) that contains links to the key videos. So that might be the easiest way. And I saw that it includes a video data sheet. But let us know if that doesn't give you what you need.

Re: More information please...

nancyend1 — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:56:10 GMT

It's been a couple of weeks, now, since the original posting. Has there been any update on pricing models? For example, will Quad be priced based on per seat, per server or what? Will Quad be available both in On-Premise and Cloud/SaaS versions? Would love an indication of what list prices will look like. I know that SharePoint goes for in the neighborhood of $7.00 to $10.00 per user. Any insight?

Re: More information please...

ChrisPalermo — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:29:22 GMT

As it stands, Quad is priced based on per seat. It is currently available as on-prem, but there has been much interest in a cloud offering and that is on the product roadmap. (I encourage any of the contributors from the product team to offer additional detail!)

I would point you to your company's Cisco Account Lead for actual numbers - but if you don't have one or know who that is, I'm sure we can point you in the right direction.

Re: More information please...

nancyend1 — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:15:10 GMT

Thanks, Chris. A couple more points... I notice that Quad is currently aimed at the high-end enterprise (10,000+ users). Does anyone know if there are plans to have scaled down versions? Will there be versions targeted at smaller enterprises (1,000 - 10,000 users) or SME (up to 1,000 users)? Also will there be a "light" version... a version with less than full functionality? Also, how is Quad being packaged... a la carte modules or bundled?

Re: More information please...

ChrisPalermo — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:35:13 GMT

Nancy - While the focus now is more high-end enterprise, there are plans to focus on the other market segments. That's really where the cloud offering would come into play since I'm sure those other goups may be more interested in the cloud vs. on-prem. As far as "light" vs. "full" functionality - I don't believe there will be skinnied down version of Quad, but the value of Quad is really around how it integrates with your other applications and Unified Communications. So Quad out-of-box allows you to integrate with Visual Voicemail (via Cisco Unity), Click-to-Meet (via WebEx), Click-to-Chat (via WebEx Connect and other 3rd party), Presence (via CUPS and other 3rd party), Click-to-call (via CUCM), enhanced video support (via Show and Share), etc. And our Advanced Services group has already taken advantge of the openness of Quad to create custom integrations - integrating Quad with Novell Groupwise for one of our initial customers.

Re: More information please...

lawliu — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 16:28:36 GMT

Excellent answer, Chris! I couldn't have said/typed it better myself. 🙂

Lawrence Liu

Product Manager, Cisco Quad

Re: More information please...

marcusjhdon — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:55:56 GMT

I've just noticed this site is powered by Jive Software, which is rather ironic! Perhaps it would be good to showcase Cisco Quad by using it to power your own social networks

Re: More information please...

lawliu — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:19:09 GMT

"showcase Quad" - yes, we'll certainly do that in the due course of time. 🙂

Re: More information please...

nancyend1 — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:10:44 GMT

Any idea of when Quad will be available for extra-net-type use or for smaller business company use? My business contact is a little too small for the full-bore enterprise versions and also will probably need extra-net capabilities. Also, how important is Liferay going to be in the Quad mix? Will the Liferay components stay or will they be phased over to Cisco-developed components? The reason I ask is that my business contact wants to know if it would be helpful the hire some folks with Liferay experience.

Re: More information please...

lawliu — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:36:45 GMT

Nancy, Quad is currently targeted at intranet scearnios within the enterprise and upper-mid market. Support for extranet/B2B scenarios will be provided in a future release.

We licensed and leveraged the source code for Liferay Enterprise for particular components of Quad, so having Liferay dev experience would help somewhat, but at this point, we're focused on working with major systems integrators rather than small/independent developers to customize and extend Quad.