Cisco and Accenture team up on collaboration

The Accenture & Cisco Business Group will design and build a series of collaboration tools

Cisco Systems and Accenture have announced plans to form a new group to build collaborative tools for enterprises.

The Accenture & Cisco Business Group will design and build a series of collaboration tools that will run within a variety of corporate applications, with the goal of making teams work more effectively and with greater efficiency.

"For collaboration tools to deliver maximum value they must extend seamlessly beyond desktop, organisational and corporate boundaries, becoming intrinsically available to processes and applications across the IT infrastructure," said Rob Lloyd, senior vice president for the US, Canada and Japan at Cisco.

"Together with Accenture, we are helping companies move to a more virtualised environment, using the network as the platform to enable seamless access to key business processes and applications anytime, anywhere and from any device."

The new group will build systems around Cisco's WebEx and TelePresence product lines. The first three offerings will cover Customer Contact Transformation Solutions, Network Infrastructure Solutions and Unified Communications & Collaboration Solutions.

"Now more than ever our clients face a range of challenges, from reducing operational costs and managing complex consolidations to competing globally and facing competitors with new cost-efficient business models," said Andre Hughes, managing director of Accenture, who leads the group.

"We formed the Accenture & Cisco Business Group to provide a seamless services team that can help clients improve their performance and competitiveness by making it easier for them to harness technology as they adapt to new ways of working."