Web conferencing in the context of "Synchronous computer-mediated communication"

Webex by Cisco, is an American subsidiary of Cisco Systems that develops and sells web conferencing, videoconferencing and contact center as a service applications. It was founded as WebEx Communications, Inc., in 1995 and acquired by Cisco Systems in May 2007. Its headquarters are in San Jose, California.

Its software products include Webex App, Webex Suite, Webex Meetings, Webex Messaging, Webex Calling, Webex Contact Center, and Webex Devices. All Webex products are part of the Cisco Systems collaboration portfolio.

Consumerization is the reorientation of product and service designs to focus on (and market to) the end user as an individual consumer, in contrast with an earlier era of only organization-oriented offerings (designed solely for business-to-business or business-to-government sales). Technologies whose first commercialization was at the inter-organization level thus have potential for later consumerization. The emergence of the individual consumer as the primary driver of product and service design is most commonly associated with the IT industry, as large business and government organizations dominated the early decades of computer usage and development. Thus the microcomputer revolution, in which electronic computing moved from exclusively enterprise and government use to include personal computing, is a cardinal example of consumerization. But many technology-based products, such as calculators and mobile phones, have also had their origins in business markets, and only over time did they become dominated by high-volume consumer usage, as these products commoditized and prices fell. An example of enterprise software that became consumer software is optical character recognition software, which originated with banks and postal systems (to automate cheque clearing and mail sorting) but eventually became personal productivity software.

In a different sense, consumerization of IT is the proliferation of personally owned IT at the workplace (in addition to, or even instead of, company-owned IT), which originates in the consumer market, to be used for professional purposes. This bring your own device trend has significantly changed corporate IT policies, as employees now often use their own laptops, netbooks, tablets, and smartphones on the hardware side, and social media, web conferencing, cloud storage, and software as a service on the software side.