Cisco and its alliance partner Telstra have announced this morning that they will be joining forces to deliver Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) to Telstra customers. Integrated voice, video, TelePresence and mobility applications signify a significant leap forward for the communication and collaboration capabilities of its customers.

Dubbed Cloud Collaboration, all services will be hosted locally in Telstra's Australian data centres. Delivered to customers over Telstra's NextG and Next IP networks will ensure high level security and reliability. The combination of the high-end, flexible and feature rich applications from Cisco and the highly secure, high-speed and reliable networks and infrastructure operated by Telstra helps ensure that end-users will truly be getting a best-of-breed solution.

The alliance between Cisco and Telstra is a long-standing and fruitful one. We are excited that Telstra have selected Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) to provide the most comprehensive cloud-based unified communications suite of services, including TelePresence as a Service and full integration with Cisco Jabber Plus, to Australian customers through its cloud. There are obvious natural synergies between these two organisations and we are looking forward to bringing end-users complete collaboration solutions well into the future.

Telstra Cloud Collaboration will be available to customers in the coming months along with demonstrations at the Cisco Innovation Suite, located in the Telstra Experience Centre in Melbourne. The Cisco Innovation Suite experience is due to be replicated at Telstra's Experience Centre in Sydney, with more suites planned for launch around Australia in the future.