More information please...

[marcusjhdon]

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).

[lawliu]

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

Lawrence Liu

Product Manager, Cisco Quad

[marcusjhdon]

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

[lawliu]

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

[nancyend1]

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.

[lawliu]

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.

[Charles Little]

Lawrence

I am the Visual Networking Specialist for a Cisco Gold Partner. We are well engaged with Cisco Show N Share and well versed in other social media platforms. We were told that Quad is currently very narrowly focused on accounts over 10K users with and can only be sold by a very few GTM partners. When will Quad be available for general release? Will it be an AT product from the start? What restrictions will be in place or certifications will be required when the product goes into General availability?

Thanks

[lawliu]

Charles, general availability requires much more than just putting up some files for others to download or hosting Quad instances for people to log into. We see Quad as more than just a tool or set of capabilities; it's an enabler for business transformation. We've prioritized our focus to be on customer success much more so than on gaining  market share, so GA will happen only when we in  conjuction with our early adopter customers and partners firmly believe  that all the pieces are in place. I don't have more details to disclose at this point.

[nancyend1]

I have seen that Quad is based on VMware. I also realize there is an alliance between Cisco, VMware, and EMC for joint development opportunities. Is Quad, therefore, VMware-exclusive, or could any virtualization tool be used? Also, I understand that Quad comes with a UCS. How does that get paid for, separately, or as part of the license fee? And, will Quad ever run on something other than a Cisco UCS?

[Dirk-Jan Uittenbogaard]

Currently Quad is running on VMWare only. Don't know if it will support any other virtualization products.

About the UCS: For as far as I know UCS will be purchased separately. If customers already have UCS products they could easily add blades to run Quad.

[tbyrne]

How much of Liferay is still extant in Quad?  If I have liferay skills, can that accelerate my deployment?  Will you continue to track Liferay development and fold those enhancements into Quad, or are you forking off liferay from this point going forward.

Many thanks.

Tony Byrne

[GeorgSigloch]

Maybe this is not the correct threat, I just try it:

- Is Quad also available on MS SQL?

- What about SharePoint 2010?

Thanks

Georg Sigloch

[ChrisPalermo]

Georg - The Quad database is actually embedded into the Quad platform itself  (no additional database licenses are required).  It uses an embedded Oracle instance at this point. As far as SharePoint goes - Quad is designed to be interoperable such that from a document management perspective, you can wire in third party cms systems, like SharePoint, to serve as the doc library for Quad.  And there is planning already underway to bring in other features of SharePoint, like Lists.  That's really a key point of Quad - that it's an enterprise collaboration "platform" - and in order to maximize the value, we want to make sure customers can connect to the tools and business functionality they already use (versus having it be a standalone app).  Hope that helps!

[mgotta]

Hi Georg, just to add additional context:

Quad uses a variety of data stores, both internal and external. Quad does leverages the CMIS standard as part of our integration capabilities. Collaboration Data is maintained in an Oracle Database, Social Graph is in a Resource Description Framework (RDF) store, and the Document/Media repository is in a Storage Area Network (SAN). We do not support MS-SQL.

SharePoint integration occurs at the content management level. SharePoint can be connected to Quad for use as a back-end repository (as can other leading content management systems). Quad also supports integration with other Microsoft products including Exchange (calendaring) and OCS (IM and presence).

Hope this helps!

- Mike

[GeorgSigloch]

Mike, Chris,

we are looking exactly for such a platform and all what you mention sound really great; except that you do not support MS SQL. :-(

Sorry for that.

Georg

[sanjkhan@cisco.com]

Georg,

Like Chris and Mike mentioned that the data stores required to run Quad are embedded within it. It is a self-contained application and our customers are responding to it in much more positively, as compared to scenario where data store is managed externally and separately. Essentially product is agnostic to the platforms running in an enterprise.

With that said, could you please describe the need for MS-SQL support?

Thanks

Sanjay