Happy New Year! As I return from the holidays and begin the year ahead, I'm energized and excited about all the amazing accomplishments we achieved with WebEx in 2014. Many recollections come to mind that I'd like to share with you. And I have exciting news for 2015 - already! More on this in just a minute...

WebEx is really at the core of everyone's work life. With over 60 million users and more than 1 million meetings a day, we really impact how people work and live. It was just a little over a year ago that I started leading the Cloud Collaboration Applications team at Cisco. When I started, I challenged the WebEx product team with a new goal to dramatically improve our already great web conferencing tool. A key element of this goal was a focus on simplicity. Making WebEx simple in addition to enhancing functionality was the target. Bottom line: It is our mission to delight every WebEx user and make their work life more productive.

The New WebEx

My team took this challenge to heart and made significant product changes in this direction. In October 2014, we launched theNew WebExthat comes with a new clean intuitive interface, improved web landing pages that make it easier to join online meetings, much faster meeting load times, better video layout, and wideband VoIP audio for better audio quality.

This month, we released additional improvements to make it easier for anyone to share content in a meeting. We also introduced a super-simple one-click way to schedule and join meetings via Personal Rooms.

We are very pleased with the feedback we are getting from customers who are already using theNew WebEx. The overwhelming positive feedback includes comments like these "love the new interface," "WebEx is cool again," and "super slick." The overall general sentiment is that we are making progress in the right direction. You can rely on us that this is just the beginning. There is more work for us to do and you will never see us slow down while executing for user delight.

Cloud-based Conferencing

Last year we also expanded WebEx conferencing with the introduction of Collaboration Meeting Rooms, our cloud-based video-bridging service. This new service helps address what many of you had asked us to provide -one touch to join meetings regardless of the video device or conferencing flavor you use. Organizations such as Moffitt Cancer Center have told us that with Cisco CMR, "This new way of meeting has revolutionized how we practice medicine. Now we want to share it with all our partner affiliates." 

Industry Recognition

And now, I have exciting news to share. As an additional complement to the changes we made to WebEx over the last year, Gartner has recognized Cisco as a leader in the latest release of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing. Gartner once again positioned Cisco as a leader for "ability to execute" and "completeness of vision." We consider this as a nod and appreciate it as we strive to deliver the world's best web conferencing solution to you every day.

As we celebrate this success, I want to thank you for sharing your feedback.

I look forward to the year ahead and toward making many more developments to WebEx to help you accomplish great things more effectively.

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