Defining the New Collaboration Experience
Jeff Seifert
Chief Technology Officer, Cisco Canada
As Chief Technology Officer for Cisco Canada, Jeff Seifert provides technical guidance and direction in key advanced and emerging technologies and go-to-market strategies. He is managing several global-reaching initiatives, including the development of Cisco's Intelligent Airport Solution, and assisting large service providers in delivering consumer and business voice solutions. As a unified communications expert, Seifert has guided many large customer migrations from traditional telephony to unified communications.
Seifert was appointed a Distinguished Systems Engineer, Cisco's highest technical distinction, in August 2003. As an individual who represents the pinnacle of Cisco's technical and sales expertise, he is responsible for transforming customer demand into innovative solutions that companies can utilize in an effective and efficient manner.
Seifert joined Cisco in 1995 as a systems engineer supporting enterprise and service provider accounts. He progressed to a National Consulting Systems Engineer position supporting Cisco's introduction of IP telephony and evolution to unified communications. Prior to joining Cisco, he held financial, management, and technical positions at Bell Canada, Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), and IBM Canada.
Seifert has achieved double CCIE certification, including Routing & Switching CCIE in 1996 and Voice CCIE in 2003. He holds a bachelors in applied science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto.
ABSTRACT
Collaboration is driving the next wave of business growth, innovation and productivity. There are four key trends driving business complexity and making Collaboration more critical than ever including: global value chains, consumerization of IT, information overload and worker mobility.
For organizations everywhere, these realities are forcing a shift in the nature of work: how we work, who we work with, when we work, and where we work. Organizations need a new collaboration experience that is human centric; that connects people, information, and teams; that leverages text and document based solutions, but dramatically transforms the way we collaborate with real-time voice and video interactions. The network is uniquely positioned to achieve inter-company collaboration because it touches all people, devices and applications, which is key in today¹s heterogenous work environment.