With social networking and social collaboration tools becoming steadily more valuable, companies are increasingly putting out their own brand of social capability. During the Enterprise 2.0 event, Cisco (News - Alert) today showed off its own suite of tools for social collaboration, WebEx Social – formerly known as Cisco Quad – will not only give users more social collaboration capability, but also put it in the palms of their hands by bringing it mainly to mobile devices.

Cisco WebEx Social brings in plenty of features to the table that make it especially useful for its user base. Topping the list is its integration with the widely-used Microsoft (News - Alert) Office suite of tools, allowing users both access to and distribution capability for documents developed in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. WebEx Social also offers integrated email capability with Microsoft Outlook, an enhanced version of the WebEx Social app for iPhone (News - Alert) and iPad, video conferencing in HD including compatibility with a variety of endpoints like – not surprisingly – Cisco TelePresence, and a series of deployment models available so customers can choose what best fits their business operations, including an on-premise option and a cloud-based option.

This combination gives Cisco a terrific option to offer for its users, and gives its users in turn a robust collaboration solution that may well be more necessary now than ever before. With more companies discovering the value of using remote workers, they are in turn dialing down on the amount of time and money spent while keeping facilities and collaborations operating, while also producing the kind of thing that's downright vital. Cisco's WebEx Social is looking to do exactly that by bringing social tools to work, as well as providing all those other connectivity tools like videoconferencing and the like – all the while bringing it to a device that, essentially, allows people to work from most anywhere and be every bit as involved as they would if they were working in a corner office on the premises.

Cisco's WebEx Social should prove to be a big hit with users, especially those who still work but spend a lot of time out of the office. The power of collaboration has been clearly shown for some time now, and has given employees more tools with which to accomplish collaboration. This move is likely to pay off – especially for Cisco.

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