Mobile World Congress: Cisco Extends WebEx to BlackBerry

Cisco is showcasing the newest additions to its WebEx Mobile Business collaboration offering at the Mobile World Congress this week.

The company says the additions are a response to customer needs. The expanded offering will include smartphones such as the BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Curve 8900, and BlackBerry Storm; the Nokia E71, E75, N97, and other Nokia Eseries and Nseries, and the Samsung Blackjack II. Support for these smartphones is scheduled to be available in April 2009.

Users will be able to launch Cisco WebEx Meeting Center through the browser on their smartphones to receive integrated audio and Web conferencing over 3G or a combination of 2G and Wi-Fi. In addition, users will be able to attend a scheduled meeting and to view presentations, applications and desktops with live annotations. This offering is planned to be available on several smartphone operating systems including BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. There is no cost to attend these meetings, but to schedule and host a meeting from a computer requires a host account on Cisco WebEx Meeting Center.

In addition, by sending an SMS message, meeting hosts will now be able to invite a mobile attendee on any SMS-capable mobile phone to a meeting in progress and the attendee will simply reply “1” to easily join the audio portion of a meeting with Cisco WebEx Meeting Center, Training Center, and Event Center.