San Jose, Calif and Basking Ridge, NJ March 8, 2016 — Cisco today announced it will team with Verizon Enterprise Solutions to deliver Cisco Spark , a new cloud-based collaboration service, to Verizon’s customers. This is part of Verizon’s plan to offer a broad range of next-generation collaboration solutions.

Building on top of their highly successful collaboration alliance, Verizon is taking a leading role in the fast-growing cloud collaboration landscape. By combining Verizon’s vast mobile assets and world-class network services, leading global unified communications and collaboration portfolio and combining it with Cisco’s strong go-to-market push, the companies will be ideally positioned to develop and deliver new advanced collaboration services.

Cisco’s unique approach to cloud places industry leaders such as Verizon at its core. By leveraging the distinctive capabilities and assets of Verizon, Cisco sets a precedent for a new engagement model.

Cisco Spark delivers integrated collaboration capabilities to enable a powerful user experience. The new joint offer will deliver Spark Message and Spark Meet features integrated with Verizon’s business collaboration services in such a simple way that it is hard to tell where one ends and the next begins.

Read the latest about Cisco Spark here .

Hosted in the Cisco Cloud and built on an open, extensible system, the Cisco Spark platform provides powerful APIs and integrations that help developers create useful apps extending the value of Cisco Spark. The joint offer will deliver message and meet capabilities integrated with Verizon’s business collaboration services, including Unified Communications and Collaboration as a Service (UCCaaS), and Verizon’s contact center services. The joint offer will run over Verizon’s wireless and global wireline networks.

The new offering will be available later this year to enterprise and government agencies around the globe.

Executive Quotes

Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Collaboration, Data Analytics and IoT groups

"Cisco is putting our leading providers at the center of our cloud strategy. As we bring Cisco Spark and other SaaS solutions to market, we will team with our global service providers to jointly develop, sell and market. This unique SaaS model is not about service providers simply reselling Cisco Spark, but about joint innovation and shared business outcomes."

Bob Minai, Executive Director, Advanced Communications at Verizon

"Verizon is a leader in delivering global, mobile-enabled unified communications solutions to our business and government clients. By integrating Cisco Spark meeting and messaging capabilities into Verizon’s collaboration portfolio and global network, Verizon and Cisco will continue to help enterprise clients with digital transformation initiatives that drive better customer experiences and meaningful, measurable business outcomes.”