With all the high-profile departures, does anybody else think Webex might be looking for a new owner soon?
19 replies (most recent on top)
@3mhp+1u68x1Ot Cisco has exited a few businesses over the years. Some examples include Scientific Atlanta, and Linksys.
https://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/management/cisco-exits-scientific-atlanta-business-with-600-million-technicolor-sale/
To the original question asking whether Webex might be sold, has any Cisco product line ever been sold off? I don't think so.
You do know Microsoft Teams is free and good enough. I was LR Feb 2024, and now using MS Teams at a new company. It works fine, and handoff between PC, Mac, and iphone works great also. All these products are basically about the same now, just like dial tone.
Webex could be revived. It has name recognition with a lot of the "old dinos" and everyone used it 5-10 years ago, so with some good strategy, we could manage a turn around.
Webex is now a solid product, but it was very messy for a while, lost us a bunch of customers. As a platform, it allows us to sell a bunch of other products. Might not be the worst idea for us to offer it for free to some companies as an add on (to help us sell calling, contact center, and a few other associated collaboration products).
Or we could give away a base model of Webex, and sell premium features. We need to think outside the box if we want to keep collab alive.
OK, people, most of those that comment don't know much about the subject. Collab is not just Webex. Webex is not the only one with market problems. Zoom penetrated marked during pandemic, but then it suffered a lot as well. Webex customers are not just US government and some old irrelevant companies. First of all, US government is the kind of customer everyone dreams off. Then there is European Central Bank, Ford, some Swiss banks, Apple, a number of small companies across different regions. Most of these that I listed are organizations that have money and can pay. That's why we like them.
While this is all good, the problem is that it is not enough. And that is the problem with Collab. It is not so much about the product, it is about how we passed opportunity during pandemic.
WebEx has a superior UX to Teams, idk what y'all are on about. It's been more reliable for me too.
Not sure why they would, they had double digit percentage in new order growth.
@swr+1u68x1Ot Yes. All those dinosaur companies like Apple and Amazon and Walmart and...
Who will buy a cisco internal IT tool?
Not suggesting whether or not they should, but why wouldn't they sell Webex? Someone said they have a 'huge market share'. Really?
Who is going to buy that old messy tech ?
We only got into it to sell PoE switches. The time has passed. Move on and refocus on networking.
Microsoft giving teams away for free you cant compete with that…
Zoom and Teams dominate now.
Cisco had their chance to make Zoom theirs. Eric Yuan (founder of Zoom) worked for them. He presented his idea and they rejected it. So he left, founded Zoom.
Nobody but government uses WebEx now. The UX is weak compared to Zoom and Teams.
Cisco once again missing the mark and letting another one slip right through their fingers. sigh.
Cisco collaboration is a dying market. It used to be huge and we used to be the gorilla in the room. We now are far from first in every category we play in. We’ve lost tremendous market share over the past few years. I agree that it’s nothing to toss away but competing for fourth or fifth place is not within the DNA of the company to keep that type of business alive.
Does anyone still use WebEx outside Cisco? Maybe some gvt / dinosaur corps but nobody who knows what they are doing. Sell it to Zoom I say.
All these comments are so funny. Cisco collab is a huge market share. Anyone saying we should sell it off clearly has no idea of what Cisco does.
Webex has nothing unique to offer outside of Cisco so my hunch is just run very lean in sustain mode until fully off books
I would feel bad for the employees in that BU, but it’s time. Collab is a market that Cisco shouldn’t have entered.
Competitors have a price advantage and nobody wants to purchase a hardware package for every meeting room.
Calling is the only “growth”. And that’s basic IP telephony with a low barrier to entry and with lots of established players.