For most of the past decade, the office was something organisations fitted out once and then left alone. Brian Stout, SVP of Global Sales for Collaboration and Workplace Experience at Cisco, says that cycle has collapsed. Customers that once built a floor and sat in it for ten years are now reconfiguring spaces every quarter for new projects and teams, and they need data to do it well.
Speaking to UC Today at WebexOne 2026 in Austin, Stout says Cisco's answer is to sell the workplace as a single platform. Its Intelligent Workplace Experiences proposition brings together secure networking, collaboration devices, Cisco Spaces and ThousandEyes, managed through Cisco Cloud Control.
How Cisco Intelligent Workplace Experiences Serve People, Places and IT
Stout breaks the value down by audience. For employees, the goal is to "earn the commute" with an office experience that works every time, which he sees as the most credible route back from the return-to-office struggles many companies have faced. For facilities and real estate teams, he says Cisco has identified significant cost savings across its own 32 offices, through smarter capacity planning, rebuilding rooms to meet specific needs, and understanding densification.
The third audience is IT. Stout says manageability now runs through Cloud Control, with AI layered in to turn network and space data into decisions.
AI is going to become a workmate to a lot of employees within the workspace.
Data Sovereignty and Devices Behind Webex's Best Quarter in Seven Years
The timing suits Cisco. In August, Collaboration posted its best quarter in seven years, growing 12% year on year with video devices up 40%. Stout credits the broader workplace conversation, device growth and interoperability, with Cisco hardware now running Webex, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Meet.
He puts equal weight on sovereignty. With geopolitical pressure pushing data residency up buyers' agendas, Cisco's ability to offer on-premises, cloud and hybrid deployments has become a differentiator, he says, backed by in-country data centres.
