Another year, another WebexOne Conference! The yearly event is back in style as the entire Cisco community comes together virtually on October 26 and 27 to discuss and share the best practices and new products that are powering the future of the IT channel. The past year has brought many challenges to the industry, the least of which was the massive shift to remote working, and this is reflective of both the theme and the structure of WebexOne: Elevate.
“The theme goes with the five pillars of hybrid work that we have right now,” Mike Brooks, Sales Business Development Manager Collaboration at Cisco, told EDGE360. “Flexibility, inclusiveness, support, security, and manageability – everything we are doing is based around those five pillars.” Brooks noted that the theme of elevation brings technology in line with these five pillars and allows Cisco to champion and build from them for the future. “We want to see people elevating their experience and participation, and more importantly, we want to help them do that.”
Anyone who has worked remote or hybrid over the last year can tell you that the entire workforce has demonstrated working from home is not only possible, but it is, in some cases, better than the old way. “Cisco has been hybrid for years now, so when it came time to support our partners, we had experience with empowering employees’ success in that environment,” Brooks added before noting that WebexOne will focus on that expertise.
Brooks hopes that attendees will learn from Cisco’s experience and see the many ways to enable the future of work. “For a while, we have always defined workspace and workforce as being two parts of the same whole, but now we need to discuss how we can enable those five pillars for employees working remotely.” According to Brooks, the WebexOne presentations will examine how Webex is one of the best solutions for this increasingly common way of working.
“When the pandemic hit, Cisco realized that there was a multitude of needs for people in a variety of spaces, each unique,” Brooks added. Education, government, healthcare – each was affected by the move to remote work, which Cisco saw as an opportunity to help. By working with these organizations, Cisco and Webex have evolved in accordance with the needs of the end-user. “WebexOne is going to be the platform that showcases how the future of work will happen.”
The two-day event will largely follow two tracks. Brooks told us that the first is establishing how the IT channel has changed and what Webex has done to address it. “There is now a major difference between a workspace and a workforce, so we will address the collaboration platform that we can offer to end-users.”
“On Day Two, we are going to focus on the customer experience,” Brooks continued. He noted that the main issue now is how the IT Channel will communicate moving forward. “Whatever the end-user needs to work, Webex is striving to incorporate it.” Innovation has driven the channel forward, but it will not end anytime soon, Brooks added. WebexOne will be one of the most important collaboration events of the year; for any organization that strives to deliver next-generation collaborative technology, this will be a “must attend” event.
To learn more about WebexOne, click here.
