Remote meetings have remained part of the new way of working. For this reason, Cisco will add the Microsoft Teams messaging application to its meeting devices, something that attracts attention because the telecommunications company has its own service: Webex .
Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s chief security and collaboration officer, said the company aims to expand platform options on its devices.
“The way this market is evolving is very similar to the way the movie entertainment market has evolved,” Patel said with consumers who have multiple subscriptions to streaming services like Netflix, Disney, HBO and Hulu.
“There will be times when people want to be on a Microsoft Teams call, they want to be on a Zoom call, they want to be on a Google call.”
As for the possibility that it could cannibalize market share from Cisco’s Webex app, Patel said he believed the company would benefit if customers had a better experience using multiple platforms.
Webex, once a widely used platform, has lost users to competitors like Zoom or Google Meet.
For his part, Ilya Bukshteyn, vice president of Microsoft Teams Calling and Devices, told Reuters that the Teams Room software already runs on several other hardware devices and will be available on Cisco devices starting in the first quarter of next year.
Patel admitted that “many people have a misconception of Webex as their grandfather’s software,” but said that in the past two years Cisco has released many new features, including real-time translation and meeting transcription, that would eventually allow a conversation in multiple languages through Webex.
