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Now, web conferencing on smartphones

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CIOL Bureau
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Kiran DatarFrom the age of simple telephones and manual exchanges to that of the ultramodern smartphones and 3G services, the modes that help in communication has transcended even the wildest of our imaginations. And the mobile phone is not just a gadget to communicate but it is a meeting point of computing and communication.

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And now Cisco WebEx has added a new level of intelligence to these smartphones by offering web conferencing services. These services will surely bring in a change in the way business people communicate today in a more cost-effective and convenient way.

Kiran Datar, managing director, Cisco WebEx, talks to Pankaj Maru of CyberMedia News about the company’s new technological breakthrough, about web conferencing on smartphones and the business prospects of the new offering... Excerpts:

Recently, Cisco WebEx launched the web conferencing services on smart mobile phones. So how do you see a need for such web-based service offerings on smartphones in a country like India, which has huge cellphone users? And what kind of business are you expecting with this new service offering initially?

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According to Gartner, worldwide mobile phone sales to the end users totaled 314.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 17 per cent increase from the same period in 2009. Smartphone sales to the end users reached 54.3 million units, an increase of 48.7 per cent from the first quarter of 2009. Growth in the mobile devices market was driven by double-digit growth of smartphone sales in mature markets, helped by wider product availability as well as mass market price tags.

Considering the way we have to work today, this offering is an important step towards increasing business productivity. With this solution available on all of these smartphones, workers will be able to have a lot more choice, a lot more freedom and those two things translate directly to being able to collaborate quickly and easily, thus getting business decisions made faster. We therefore see a good potential for this service in the Indian market.

Since a huge amount of business people use smartphones, do you think web conferencing service will be largely used by them and not by general people? And what is the business model being used to offer these services?

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Irrespective of the type of the user, the freedom that they will be able to gain from using this solution will help businesses and their employees to increase productivity because workers will be able to work wherever and whenever they wish, using their chosen device.

There is no cost for attendees to join meetings on smartphones. Users must have a current WebEx Meeting Center subscription to schedule or host a meeting on a computer. The subscription fee for WebEx Meeting Center for a single user is USD $49/month. Regular telephony and data charges still apply; users have to check with their mobile operator for more information on these tariffs.

How dependent is the service on the bandwidth provided by the telecom operators? Does it function without any hitches because still in India the telecom networks are highly congested during peak hours?

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To use WebEx on a smartphone, users will need an active 3G cellular or Wi-Fi connection. Users can also attend WebEx meetings on 2.5G phones but they’ll need to select only one media, either data or voice. If 3G is used as the access network, the smartphone needs to be compatible to the local 3G network.

Today smartphones are mini-computing devices with multiple functions and applications and the Internet. So how much care has been taken about the security issues such as mobile phone hacking, data leakage or call blocking at the users end?

All WebEx meetings are delivered on an on-demand Cisco WebEx Collaboration Cloud, configurable for each organization’s policy requirements. All of the data exchanged in Cisco WebEx meeting applications is routed through the Cisco WebEx Collaboration Cloud, a dedicated, secure and global network of data centers. This network provides 24/7 accessibility with failover capabilities and accommodates peak usage times. Whenever Cisco WebEx meeting applications are used, the data is encrypted and hosted on this secure network and delivered to a variety of end points including desktops and mobile devices.

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As 3G services are expected to be rolled out shortly in India, do you expect that mobile and web-based services will be high on demand and generate more business for Cisco WebEx?

According to a Crisil Research Report, the launch of 3G services, network deployment by new operators and roll out of long distance network will drive an investment of around $55 billion (Rs.2,47,500 crore) over the next five years into the Indian telecom sector.

As the country is in the process of ushering in the third generation (popularly known as 3G) technology for the mobile telephone industry, mobile software solution providers are sensing a big business opportunity. With the availability of applications such as Cisco WebEx Meeting Center on a larger number of 3G smartphones, 2010 looks set to be the year when enterprise applications like web conferencing become truly mobile, providing workers with access to their corporate applications on the go.

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