“Everything we do is designed with people in mind—to help them work, collaborate, and create together. That’s why we have invested so much in Webex,” said Rowan Trollope, SVP and GM, Applications Group, Cisco. “Our vision is to bring this amazing experience to a billion users and conference rooms all around the world.”
Cisco Webex has been Cisco’s video conferencing staple for the last decade. Last week Cisco made a series of significant announcements centered around the Webex platform at their Collaboration Summit in Phoenix, AZ. Today’s workforce is changing, becoming more mobile, and Cisco had designed a suite of collaboration tools to cater to the modern workforce. The announced convergence of Spark and Webex is more than a re-branding, it is the technical convergence of both platforms to create a new, simplified collaboration experience on a single platform.
Webex Meetings & Webex Teams
Cisco collaboration users used to have two different platforms they could meet on, Webex or Spark. Each application had its own separate meetings, but with the convergence everything is now a Webex meeting. All meetings are now supported on the back end by the Webex backbone IP network, which connects meeting servers in both public cloud spaces and Webex data centers giving customers the best quality and lowest latency experience possible. All Webex meetings can now be joined from both Webex Meetings and Webex Teams (formerly Cisco Spark). “Webex Teams supports a new type of meeting, called a Webex team meeting, which takes advantage of the participants in a space to provide a highly secure easy to use new type of Webex meeting – the team meeting.” – Jonathan Rosenberg, CTO for Cisco Collaboration Business
Devices
Webex devices are designed to help teams communicate clearly and efficiently regardless of where or how they are meeting. The new Webex devices include:
- Webex Board – the all in one device for team collaboration allows you to wirelessly video and audio conference, present, whiteboard, and annotate shared content. Using Webex Teams you can connect your entire teams through any device.
- Webex Room Devices – the Webex room series includes fully integrated systems for any sized rooms or use the Webex Room Kits to a regular display into a video conferencing solution.
- Webex Desk Devices - the Webex DX models provide all-in-one HD video and voice for high-quality video conferencing from your desktop. With the Webex Rooms OS you can whiteboard and annotate shared content from your DX device.
Webex Assistant
Last November Cisco announced the use of Artificial Intelligence to improve meetings in the launch of the first enterprise-ready meetings voice assistant. The Webex Assistant (formerly Cisco Spark Assistant) essentially functions as a Siri for calls and meeting management and will now be available on more devices and will have more functionality. The Webex Assistant is designed to make it easier to:
- Start meetings
- Join or leave meetings
- Make calls
- Navigate and control devices
- Find and book a meeting room
- Share screens or whiteboard
- Record meetings
- Take meeting notes
Webex Share
This new palm-sized adapter plugs into the back of any TV to enable a low-cost, simple way to share content on the screen, essentially turning any TV into a Webex Teams collaboration space. The Webex Share enables device pairing, presence detection, 802.11ac with enterprise security, and room scheduling capabilities.
Augmented Reality
Angie Mistratta did a mixed reality demonstrated at Collab Summit showing how augmented reality can be applied to Webex meetings. AR object sharing for Webex meetings is available for the mobile iOS Webex application on your Apple devices via the Apple AR Kit.
Integrations
Cisco realizes not all enterprises work exclusively in Webex and they’ve designed a solution to work where we work. With the new Webex integrations you’re able to connect Webex to other platforms, including Microsoft Teams, Google, and Slack. The Microsoft Teams integration allows you to share and join a Webex meeting from Microsoft Teams thread through a linking relationship that takes you into a Webex browser.
Flex Plan
The new Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan is a subscription plan that allows companies to pay for Cisco collaboration tools per active user in their organization. The Flex Plan offers faster, simplified ordering and covers Webex Meetings, Teams and Calling.
Here at LookingPoint we are excited about the updates being made to Cisco’s Collaboration portfolio. We see how our customers will benefit from the new consolidated, simplified and streamlined collaboration solutions and a new flexible consumption-based subscription model. All of this in conjunction with the new Webex Share device that can turn any room with a tv into a conference room is designed to make collaboration seamless and efficient. If you would like to learn more about how your organization can benefit from the new collaboration suite, please reach out to our team!
Written By: Eden Reid, LookingPoint Marketing Manager