Cisco is in the process of integrating its various collaboration products and their interfaces into a uniform and consistent design.  The goal here is to facilitate teamwork among employees. The project, internally known as Futurama, reflects the belief of the company that the large scale IT would be the next real trend for enterprises.

According to Cisco, Futurama will be tightly integrated with their collaboration products like WebEx, Quad, Jabber IM, and SocialMiner, with the aim of simplicity to provide same user-centric experience on social networks and mobile devices. Moreover, these collaboration products will be integrated together to provide a centralized experience that allows users to move between them according to their needs, says Raj Gossain, vice president of product management for Cisco Collaboration Software Group.

“It’s not just about making each of our products great unto themselves. Our objective is to bring these solutions together so that as people escalate from different experiences they feel that they are engaging with Cisco collaboration technologies in a consistent fashion: similar controls, common identity, elegant user experience,” he said.

Although Cisco has worked on Futurama for over a year redesigning the user experience, the latest updates will have more improvements and updates to their collaboration products. Cisco plans to introduce the product to the public later this year.

“We want to make these solutions as easy to use as Apple products, and as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn,” said Gossain.

An example of the influence of Futurama is the new version of the WebEx online meetings and conference application, which was announced in November last year and is currently in beta.  Also, the Quad social networking software features a design inspired by the Futurama project.

The networking giant has launched several new products for their video streaming platform for service providers at the recently concluded CES 2012.  Cisco Conductor content streaming admin platform, and its Media Processor and Transcode Manager offers real time resource utilization.

The goal, according to Cisco, is to use the ‘consumerization’ of IT and reduce training and adoption efforts on employees and corporate IT departments. Cisco is developing and investing a lot in its collaboration portfolio, and believes it’s a necessary step to compete against the likes of Microsoft, IBM, Google and others.

LG Goes LifeSize

LifeSize, a division of Logitech, today announced the LifeSize UVC Platform – the first integrated software solution and the virtualized industry infrastructure for HD video conferencing.

The LifeSize UVC Platform integrates the capabilities of re-use several infrastructure products and offers a unique instant availability from a single interface with a single login account.

According to the company, the LifeSize UVC Platform is scalable and customizable, thus removing the cost, risk and complexity of the equipment itself.  The LifeSize UVC Platform also makes testing fast and simple, with an opportunity to test before buying the product.

LifeSize is slowing gaining market share at rates of 19 percent and 35 percent over the previous two quarters. Cisco and Polycom are still the leaders in the videoconferencing market, but LifeSize expects the new software-integrated platform can provide more international growth opportunities. The company also plans to catch up with competitors by expanding the market with mobile and cloud-based offerings.