Dialog collaborates with CISCO to launch WebEx

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

Sri Lanka’s largest mobile service provider Dialog Axiata PLC announced earlier this week that it has joined forces with Cisco Systems to bring the world’s leading platform for rich media conferencing and collaboration, Cisco WebEx, to the Sri Lankan corporate sector.

From left: Cisco Systems APJ Collaborations Sales Business Head of WebEx Sandeep Mehra, Dialog Enterprise Group Chief Officer Jeremy Huxtable and Dialog Enterprise Business Development Head Nalaka Bandara – Pic by Indraratne Balasuriya

Cisco WebEx provides on-demand collaboration, online meeting, web conferencing and video conferencing applications for medium to large scale organisations, helping to fulfil business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) communication needs of companies. Dialog Axiata will be the exclusive telecommunications service provider in Sri Lanka to offer this service over the next two years.

“Collaboration is something that is allowing people to work together and furthers productivity. However we are now working in an environment that facilitates that in a whole different way. WebEx brings to you a powerful suite if business applications in order to have collaborative sessions and seamlessly brings together audio/video and web into such sessions,” explained Cisco Systems APJ Collaborations Sales Business Head of WebEx Sandeep Mehra.

Cisco WebEx is the current market leader in providing conferencing solutions with over six million registered hosts worldwide and an average of 7.6 million meetings hosted each month. The Cisco WebEx Meeting Centre recreates face-to-face meetings with real-time data, application, voice and video-sharing capabilities. Its features include voice and video conferencing, presentation and document sharing, whiteboard, desktop sharing, application sharing, instant public and private chat, live poll-in and Microsoft Outlook plug-in.

“This is a significant opportunity for businesses in Sri Lanka looking to address the changing needs of workspace collaboration as well as to enhance interaction and collaboration with their customers and partners. Through Dialog, customers will have access to the world’s most preferred Rich Media Conferencing  application, enhancing productivity and reducing costs associated with lost cycles, deferred decisions and unnecessary travel. We congratulate Dialog on the launch of this new offering,” Mehra added while thanking Dialog for being a great partner on this journey.

“This coincides with the Dialog and Suntel collaboration to create a real force in the Sri Lankan telecommunications market. We are looking to bring in new, exciting, cost-effective and intelligent products to the Sri Lankan telecommunications market and this is one of those,” stated Dialog Enterprise Group Chief Officer Jeremy Huxtable. “We look forward to a long, happy and profitable relationship with CISCO and this is the start of that.”  

With Cisco WebEx, businesses can increase their reach and meet instantly with customers, partners and colleagues from any location and through any browser or web-enabled phone. Users can conduct impromptu meetings at any time and any location and helps provide greater support to a workforce that is on the move and in dispersed locations.

“There is a soaring sale of tablets in the world – the PC market is going to grow by just 20 per cent but market for tablets will grow by 60 per cent. People are going to use more smart devices of this sort in order to be mobile and we are in turn aligning ourselves to take products to the next level. Later on we plan on introducing strategic services targeting different sectors to complement the mobile business. We have a big role to play in this dynamic enterprise landscape,” said Dialog Enterprise Business Development Head Nalaka Bandara.