WebEx: Ideas in Motion

WebEx Customer Panel Provides Meaningful Insights Into the User Experience

How do you use WebEx "sharing"? It's something you may have never thought about but there are different use cases for when someone shares a desktop, application or document. And the WebEx Customer Panel helps us understand those subtleties.

Finding: Desktop sharing is most often used with meeting attendees who are trusted (e.g. colleagues) and when more than one piece of information needs to be shared.

WebEx launched the proprietary research panel in early 2009 to learn more about the user experience from a small and medium business point of view. The panel members are from companies around the world and provide input on the product that informs product development, marketing and sales.

As panel members, the participants have access to "inside information" to understand how WebEx is evolving - and in exchange, they tell us what is working and where we can make improvements.

Finding: Document or application sharing is most often used when working with clients or security or privacy are important.

Our panel member Ron is a Director of Education Services for a mid-size internet security company. For him, how he share tool depends on the situation. Ron explains, “We use desktop sharing only when [we] need to show multiple browsers at the same time. Our product is browser-based and application sharing is the best way to show it without the distraction of the desktop.”

We are recruiting new panel members now!

We are ready to grow our panel and are actively looking for new members. Ideal candidates would be fairly new to online meetings and be willing to participate in "assignments" to give us feedback about the experience. There is an honorarium for participating as well as the knowledge that you would be helping to shape the future of WebEx. To learn more, take a look at the panel summary.

We will be profiling more members and results in the weeks to come. If you have feedback for us, please leave a comment on this blog! We are listening!

  

WebEx iPhone App Wins "Best Business App" in Barcelona!

Well, the results are in and Alex Hadden-Boyd, Director of Marketing for Cisco’s Collaboration Software Group is doing a happy dance because of the award won by the Cisco WebEx iPhone application at Mobile World Congress. Here's her quick note from Barcelona.

I set off for Barcelona hoping to bring home the gold for Cisco and our WebEx Meeting Center for the iPhone application.  And I’m doing it – well at least, the crystal.  

We won Best Mobile Business Application from PlanetApps.  

And I couldn’t be more excited.

As Cisco extends collaboration into mobile devices, awards like this are a validation that users won’t stand still (pun intended) for applications that only run in their offices.  Users, like you and I, want all our applications on our device of choice.  And Cisco is determined to provide them.

I don’t think Cisco has a company song, but I’d ask for it to be played if we did.  I’ll see if one of the apps on one of my devices can do that!

    

Mobile World Congress: Will our iPhone App be "Best in Show"?

Alex Hadden-Boyd is the Director of Marketing for Cisco’s Collaboration Software Group and one of her pet projects has been the Cisco WebEx iPhone application. This week, Alex is in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress looking for new opportunities. She sent in this blog from the road.

We’ve submitted Cisco WebEx Meeting Center for the iPhone (v. 1.3) to the GSMA Mobile World Congress, in the category of “Best Mobile Enterprise Product or Service”.

The GSMA Global Mobile Awards will be presented within the conference for the first time in its 15-year history to allow more attendees the opportunity to cheer on their favorite nominees. This new event will be hosted by writer, actor and self-confessed technophile, Stephen Fry. The awards ceremony is Tuesday, February 16, at 3:45pm local time.

I hope we win.

Cisco WebEx is focused on creating an ideal customer experience and marrying that with the opportunities created by the device - in the case the iPhone. The application connects people and devices on the network to enable communication and collaboration on open platforms. It delivers the best solution for companies with flexible deployment options – cloud-based, premise-based, or hybrid.

WebEx went mobile in early 2009.

This application was first launched in January 2009 with updates released in April and November. It's available worldwide and has been downloaded in more than 70 countries. The mobile app works wherever iPhones are supported and 3G / Wi-Fi networks are available. It is also localized in nine languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. 

Think about it – the Cisco WebEx iPhone application, which is a free download from Apple's App Store, allows users to simply click to join and actively collaborate from wherever they are! People can view what's being shared, see the meeting participant list, see the active speaker and chat with other meeting participants.

It’s amazing. I definitely think this is Best in Show.

  

Get Stuff Free! Register now for the Chris Anderson WebEx Event

According to Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief at Wired, one of the reasons “free” works in a digital age is that with digital goods, you can give away a huge portion of your product for free, without any cost for those goods.

That's just one of the ideas included in his new book, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price." Chris is speaking via WebEx this Wednesday, Feb 3 at 10am PT and the first 150 attendees will receive a free copy of his new book!

Register Now

So how does this affect you? Free is big, and the list of who's giving it a try grows daily. We pulled together a few examples of free things you can try today. The idea is to get you thinking about free and how it might be a business solution for your company.

Email and Calendars
Yahoo, Google, Hotmail all offer free email services typically supported by advertising. You can also find free calendars associated with these email services. The business strategy: multiple “hooks” make it harder for you to live without them.

Want even more "free" - check out this PC Magazine article
with the best free of 2009. It includes things like
 Audacity, iTunes, Winamp, TweetDeck, Google Chrome and more.

Back-up Services

This is one of the most important tools most individuals and small businesses need to insure their intellectual assets. If you need to manage costs and only need to protect a limited amount of digital assets, you can get 2GB of protection free from companies like SugarSync or Mozy. Business strategy: the minute you hit 2.1 GB, it will be too hard to switch to another vendor or manage multiple “free” accounts.

Virus Protection

This one is special and brand new – Facebook is offering its members six months of free virus protection from McAfee in response to security breaches the social networking site has experienced (you can see a list of other free virus protection services here). The business strategy: partner offers a service that has value (and responds to a PR issue) and in time, the user will agree and begin paying for the service.

Guess What? WebEx has Free Too!

And of course…we offer free WebEx events to help you learn more and stay on top of current events! You can even use the WebEx trial absolutely free (business strategy – when you experience an online meeting, we think you’ll like it!).

Be sure to join us for Chris Anderson’s talk on Wednesday. Register today!

Details
Wed, February 3, 10am PT  |  1pm ET

[Please note: the non-Cisco companies listed in this article were used as examples only, they aren't endorsements of their service. We encourage you to take a look and judge for yourself - that's the very nature of "free"!]