You can do some pretty interesting things with Cisco Spark rooms these days. With the Spark integrations, you can now interact with content and data, not just people.

For example, you could add Instagram to one of your rooms and follow a specific hashtag, like "ciscospark." Every time "ciscospark" appears on Instagram, that photo post will also appear in your room. Why would I want to do that you may ask? Well, for a marketing team, it would be a good way to get a read on what people think about your product.

Creating Spark integrations with other out-of-the-box applications, like Trello, a project management tool, or zendesk, a customer service platform, may improve the way your teams get their work done. Spark has become an open platform with endless possibilities.

My wife and I recently remodeled our kitchen, and we would ask each other things like, "Can we both cook in here without being in each other's way?" or "How can we make the kitchen work for our day-to-day lives and the times we entertain?" Basically, we were imagining what was possible. And that wasn't always easy on our own. It took the contractor and a design expert to sketch it out and make sure things worked together (including electricity, gas, and water) to give us the most space and functionality. In other words, a great kitchen experience custom-designed for our lives.

The same is true for collaboration technology. Our products are getting simpler and simpler to use, but technology alone doesn't deliver experience. People still need help imagining how they can get the most out of these products for their needs. For example, your goals may be to:

• Change the way you work
• Create more employee engagement
• Get to market faster
• Improve customer interactions

The challenge is that every company is different, and that's where our Services team comes in. We help you define your requirements and integrate your processes, software, and infrastructure to ensure you get the experience you imagined.

Catch Cisco at Enterprise Connect

At Enterprise Connect, March 7-10 in Orlando, Florida, Rowan Trollope, SVP and leader of Cisco's Collaboration Technology Group, will be announcing the latest for collaboration and Cisco Spark in his March 8 keynote.

If you'll be joining us in Orlando, stop by the Market Leaders Theatre on Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. for our panel discussion, Ignite Your Spark Investment with Collaboration Services. In the session, we'll share how Services can help you unlock the value of business applications and data by connecting them to Spark rooms. You'll also see a demo showing how Spark room integration with Salesforce.com creates a faster, more productive workflow between busy salespeople trying to close a deal.