Cisco is focusing on bringing more asynchronous communication methods to Webex after recently launching Vidcast, Vice President Omar Tawakol has told UC Today.
Vidcast, which was revealed last month, lets users film and edit videos that can be shared without the need for people to join a meeting.
The app is designed to improve the efficiency of collaboration for certain tasks – for example by reducing the number of meetings a user has to participate in, or making collaboration more accessible for teams spread across different time zones.
Tawakol, who is Vice President and General Manager of Webex Growth, said that he expects asynchronous communication to replace some, but not all, video meetings.
“We believe there is a new opportunity now for being able to do things where you don’t want to have to wait for a meeting to do, but where you don’t want to use text; you want to be able to share your screen and have a much richer collaboration,”
“For that, we believe asynchronous video may give people 20 or 30 percent of their entire time back; they’re not continuously waiting for a meeting.”
“What happens when you show up for a meeting people fill that time like water fills a bucket even if they only needed a few minutes, so we think asynchronous is going to do away with many types of meetings.”
Vidcast is the first innovation to come out of Cisco Leap, which is an internal incubator designed to build the next generation of collaboration tools.
