As the world transitions to hybrid workforces, organizations require solutions that are flexible, supportive and inclusive. Today, Cisco unveiled an all-new Webex Suite with innovations to serve as the foundation for inclusive hybrid work and events, delivering unmatched levels of flexibility and personalization for everyone.
With 98 percent of future meetings expected to include at least one remote participant, this mixed mode of working (blending remote and in-person interactions) is fueling long-lasting implications on work culture, event engagement and technology. This requires investing more broadly to reimagine the requirements of hybrid events and a hybrid workforce. The way organizations worked pre-pandemic and during the pandemic will be different in this next wave of work.
“Cisco’s collaboration business is incredibly essential to our customers,” said Chuck Robbins, CEO, Cisco. “With all the integrations the team has added – 800 new features and devices since September – we truly have the most comprehensive meetings, calling, messaging, and event management solution on the market powering the future of hybrid work.”
New Webex advancements include:
- Increased Value – The all-new Webex Suite is the industry’s first suite for hybrid work to combine meetings, calling, messaging, polling and events in one offering for up to 40 percent less than a-la-carte.
- End-to-End Events – A complete events execution and management platform necessary in the next era of hybrid events. Full capabilities of the industry’s first end-to-end event experience at scale will become available upon completion of Cisco’s Socio acquisition.
- Audience Interaction Tools – Polling, quizzes, Q&A and more powered by Slido, is the industry’s first audience engagement solution to be integrated across all collaboration experiences. Polling is available now in Meetings and will be coming soon to Events.
- Audio Intelligence – Building upon Webex’s noise removal and speech enhancement capabilities, users will have the ability of speech optimization for remote and shared workspaces through My Voice Only to eliminate background noise, including speech from people in the background, and solely focus on the main speaker’s speech. My Voice Only will be available worldwide in August,
- Camera Intelligence – People Focus is coming to Webex in 2021. People Focus uses machine learning and AI technology to individually re-frame meeting participants who are spread across a meeting room allowing remote participants to feel more connected and everyone in the meeting to benefit from seeing body language, facial expressions and more.
- Next-level Devices – The Webex Desk provides a powerful all-in-one collaboration device designed for the desk at work or home. Immersive collaboration experiences will also be available with modern touch interactions via RoomOS that connects workflows with less context switching, as well as Webex Assistant Skills platform that opens a universe of voice-powered extensions to integrate more controls, content and applications seamlessly and easily for Webex Devices.
- Secure Experiences – Real-time data loss prevention for Webex, which automatically blocks and removes confidential information, will be available in Messaging. With this real-time data loss prevention, users are prohibited from posting classified content rather than redacting or deleting content after it is posted.
Webex Suite is available today and will be priced at 40 percent lower than a-la-carte.
Webex Desk will be available to order later this month at the Cisco suggested resale price of $1,249 for customers and a standard price of $2.495.
