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UC and Conferencing

by Dave Michels

Does UC include conferencing? The vendor pitch is always yes, but in reality conferencing is often acquired separately. webex Conferencing

My wife just started work at a new company and on her first day she was given a Skype for Business account with a phone AND a WebEx account. She thought it was odd that she was given both, but realistically separate conferencing solutions are very common – and WebEx is a very popular solution.

Cisco acquired WebEx in 2007. It appears to have been a smart a acquisition as Cisco is dominating the conferencing space.

Cisco continues to evolve WebEx and made some big UI enhancements last year. The solution now sits at the intersection of audio, web, and video conferencing. Cisco recently reported WebEx statistics for June 2016 as:

  • 88 Million meeting attendees per month
  • 4.6+ Billion meeting minutes per month
  • 22 Million meetings hosted per month

88 million meeting attendees is huge! Last May Cisco said WebEx had over 15 million monthly users, so that means a lot of meetings with non regular users which likely stimulates ongoing growth. 

I did some research into conferencing, and found that it’s commonly acquired separately. You can view the report here.