We take a look at the innovations behind Cisco's successful WebEx Web meeting products suite.



The global consulting firm, Frost & Sullivan, recently presented its 'Market Leadership' award to Cisco WebEx. The company was adjudged the leader in the Indian audio and Web conferencing services market on the basis of the company's revenue growth, market share, productivity, market and technology innovations.

According to statistics revealed by Cisco WebEx, the company has over 3.5 million users, and 1,25,000 online sessions with participants joining in from over 94 countries on a daily basis. Kiran Datar, managing director, Cisco WebEx Technology Group, attributes this success to the innovative product suite that the company has developed over time.

Datar says that apart from its technological brilliance, the company's SaaS (software as a service), on-demand collaborative applications have proved to be such a success because of the innovative manner in which the services are delivered to the customer.

The solutions seamlessly integrate into an enterprise's workflow, making its processes more productive and profitable, he adds. The applications support multipoint video conferencing, Web conferencing, telework and remote access of applications.

"Apart from its technological brilliance, Cisco webEx's SaaS, on-demand collaborative applications have proved to be such a success because of the innovative manner in which the services are delivered to the customer." Kiran Datar, managing director, Cisco WebEx Technology Group

Some useful lessons
Datar goes back a little in time to recapitulate the story that eventually led to Webex's robust online meetings platform. "The history of SaaS dates back to early 2000, or the late 90s when there was a whole new model of ASPs (application service providers). Many people tried to provide software as a service. That whole model failed because of the way it was ‘architected'. The developers were taking the existing enterprise software and working around the architecture so as to deliver it over the Web, which didn't take off," he says.

But the Cisco WebEx team learnt some valuable lessons from this episode and worked on an independent idea of delivering an on-demand software-as-a-service solution, as a Web capability.
"As long as users have an Internet connection and a PC, they can log in to this network and conduct a Web conference meeting. It is as simple as clicking on a link on the Internet and getting into a Web meeting. It's like the mobile revolution. You could be anywhere and yet conduct a meeting," says Datar.

Paving the way for serial innovations In 2007, Cisco acquired WebEx for USD 3.2 billion to provide the kind of Web collaboration that would accelerate business processes, says Datar. "Cisco WebEx has grown ever since to become the world leader in online meetings solutions. The combination of Cisco and WebEx has delivered compelling solutions accelerating this next wave of business communications. Cisco's global reach and customer focus has helped WebEx extend its core Web collaboration applications," adds Datar.

Lots of companies are offering on-demand Web meetings services. So how does Webex make sure that its offerings stay ahead in the market? Datar says that the key differentiator is the Cisco Webex global collaboration cloud-a global network specifically designed for the secure delivery of on-demand applications and rich media content.

The key differentiator
To ensure security, the platform has multiple layers of security built into the network, says Datar. "Whether you think about standard protocols like SSL or 128-bit encryption, we are using all types of security layers. Besides, there is no central server where the users upload any of their documents-which means that once users end a meeting, the documents do not reside on any of the WebEx servers in its network.

"No traces of any meeting are ever retained on the network unless you record it specifically for future use. This is more like a telephone conversation where nothing gets recorded at the service providers' end. So users feel secure in exchanging any confidential data over the platform," adds Datar.

According to the company, apart from security, the network delivers lots of other capabilities as well.
Datar explains this aspect: "Cisco WebEx is not rendering this service through a single server. The network is robust and there is a fail-over capability, so that even if one server fails, the user can still conduct meetings, seamlessly," he explains.

To maximise the effectiveness of its services, the company also pays a lot of attention to the manner in which its services are packaged, priced and supported, besides technological innovations.

So, all-in-all, Cisco WebEx is practising a good mix of technology and process innovations to effectively address a market need related to a reliable and secure on-demand virtual meeting platform. The service may not be unique, but is definitely packaged intelligently. After all, hasn't someone rightly said, "Winners don't do different things. They do things differently."