News Summary:

  • Webex platform sees unprecedented demand and more than triples its normal volume.
  • As the foremost trusted business continuity provider, Cisco invests in the resilience of Webex through continued expansion of global capacity.
  • To ensure customers can easily and securely collaborate from anywhere, Cisco increases Webex security capabilities and adds new integration with Box.
  • Webex Control Hub’s intelligent and actionable insights help IT manage an enlarged remote workforce and a return to office.
  • To help doctors meet with patients while maintaining physical distance, new integration with Epic gives patients secure care via video.

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 16, 2020 — Secure collaboration technologies that help people get work done from anywhere are top of mind for every CIO, putting pressure on IT teams to both support the unprecedented shift to remote work while simultaneously planning a return to the office. Today, Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) announced key Webex enhancements to help, including: industry-leading security and compliance capabilities, intelligent and actionable insights to deliver consistent user experiences, and an integration with Box. Additionally, the integration of Epic for healthcare will give patients choices for engaging with providers key to their wellness.

As a long-time market leader, Webex continues to support the changing needs of our customers. In April, Webex supported half a billion meeting participants who generated 25 billion meeting minutes – more than triple the average volume.

“Keeping employees, heads of state, healthcare providers and many more securely connected and productive is at the heart of what we do. Even before the pandemic, Cisco was one of the world’s largest collaboration providers, supporting nearly half the world’s video conferencing. Now we’re supporting 3X the normal volumes.” said Javed Khan, VP and GM, Cisco’s Collaboration Group. “We are proud we could be there for our customers when they needed us most, and we will continue to be there moving forward as we navigate through these times.”

News Highlights:

– More capacity—so you can continue to count on Webex.
Webex has become a lifeline for hospitals, federal governments, higher education, and businesses big and small. To stay ahead of demand and continue to deliver the quality our users expect, we’ve invested in incredible amounts of global capacity; in fact, we are now running the Webex platform at 3X the previous capacity.

– More security—so you can stay connected, highly secure and productive.
The global increase in remote work has made security and privacy more critical than ever. As the world’s largest enterprise security company, Cisco is committed to security, privacy and transparency – it’s why Cisco Collaboration is trusted by 95% of the Fortune 500. Building upon the security capabilities designed into the Webex platform, we’ve now extended data loss prevention (DLP) retention, Legal Hold and eDiscovery to Webex Meetings. This gives an unprecedented level of security and protection for all meeting content – recordings, transcriptions, action items and highlights. This is yet another industry-first security offering for Webex Meetings. We are also expanding our end-to-end encryption options to include AES 256 Bit encryption with GCM mode, providing increased protection for meeting data and resistance against tampering.

– New means to manage an enlarged remote workforce and a return to office.
According to our new CIO survey, CIO Perspectives 2020, more than two-thirds of CIOs say IT complexity is a top challenge as they continue navigating through these challenging times. Top-of-mind questions include, “How can we best support remote workers?” and “How do we make sure we create a safer meeting environment in the office?” To help IT teams with such questions, Cisco Webex Control Hub provides intelligent and actionable insights, enabling IT to manage all collaboration workloads through a single pane of glass whether workers are at home or in the office. COVID-19 era use-cases for Control Hub include:

– Instantly deploy Webex Assistant, our voice assistant technology, to conference room devices. Control Hub makes this a simple task even if you have tens of thousands of devices. This will minimize the number of times people touch the screen or touchpad in shared spaces.

– Tap into deep insights about meeting room usage to influence not only cleaning schedules but also how a company plans the future office layout. Easily identify the most used rooms—use this data to inform cleaning schedules or rethink how to configure meeting spaces to better meet needs.

– Drill down into ‘real-time meetings’ data to better troubleshoot experiences and also understand changing workstyle patterns throughout the transition back to the office.

– Analyze usage trends to highlight which services and devices an organization needs to invest in.

– Easily troubleshoot and support remote workers, so teams remain productive.

Also, today we are adding to Control Hub a cloud-connected UC feature that simplifies IT workflows for hybrid deployments and expanded Webex Calling analytics. Read about them here.

Additionally, to help move work forward from wherever you are, we’ve now integrated Webex Teams and Box, the leading cloud content management platform that is used by 68% of the Fortune 500 and nearly 100,000 businesses globally. Of course, Webex Teams already has a highly secure, easy-to-use file sharing capability built right in. But now customers can choose to use Box as well as any of the other platforms we integrate with.

–  We’re making telehealth easier for patients and providers alike by integrating with Epic.
Telehealth has quickly become mainstream, enabling physicians to provide care to patients while practicing physical distancing. Our new integration with Epic electronic health record software enables providers to use Webex Teams to conduct a video visit with a patient, review medical history and update clinical documentation. Patients don’t need to download anything—they simply login to the highly secure session over a web browser and get the care they need. More than 250 million patients have a current electronic record in Epic. Other Cisco Partners are also building and deploying telehealth applications and solutions, helping clinicians to deliver care to patients around the world.

Customer, Analyst, and Partner Quotes:

Jim Lundy, Founder, CEO & Lead Analyst, Aragon Research
“Remote work has proven to be a critical enabler of business and economic continuity, ultimately proving that work really is something that we do, and not somewhere that we go. In this next phase, companies have the opportunity to completely rethink how they operate—from real estate holdings to recruitment strategies—and collaboration technologies that provide high quality and highly secure video at scale will be key as they reimagine the way they work.”

Mike Hinks, Director IT infrastructure, Vivint Solar
“Bringing all of our collaboration tools together in the cloud with Cisco Webex has delivered an unparalleled experience. The ability to have our entire company switch to work-from-home overnight while allowing our IT team to seamlessly support our global operations is enhancing our business continuity strategy and the dynamics of our interactions. Webex is playing an integral role in keeping work flowing during these unprecedented times.”

Abhijit Mazumder, Chief Information Officer, Tata Consultancy Services
“Once the pandemic hit, our first concern was for the safety of our employees, and then we focused on enabling them to be the most productive from home. In a very short time, we had 95% of our associates working in secure borderless workspaces™ collaborating effectively leveraging various cloud-based tools like Cisco Webex.”

Alex Bennett, Group SVP GTM, Intelligent Workplace, NTT
“Webex Control Hub is enabling our customers with greater insight across their collaboration and communications portfolio, including deep security, analytics and compliance capabilities. As organizations are navigating their strategies for the new norm, visibility into application performance, whether in the office or from home, within a single pane of glass is very powerful. With the accelerated transition to cloud we can leverage Webex to support clients to improve employee experience and support tangible business benefits.”

Aaron Levie, CEO, Box
“In this new era of remote work, businesses around the globe are urgently looking for better tools to help employees seamlessly collaborate internally and with customers and partners from anywhere and on any device. “We are excited to expand our partnership with Cisco with a new Box and Webex integration that enables secure remote work for our joint customers.”

Additional Resources:

  • Blog: Webex Helps Teams Stay Connected, Productive and Highly Secure, by Cisco’s Javed Khan
  • Blog: Enhance remote teamwork with Box and Cisco Webex Teams – by Box
  • Video: Business Continuity in the Time of COVID (customer video)
  • Video: Cisco Webex–Security Is At Our Core

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