Cisco's WebEx now available for iPhone

Cisco this week announced that it extending its web conferencing and collaboration capabilities to the Apple's iPhone 3G with a new iPhone application: the new Cisco WebEx meetings iPhone application is available for free download from the AppStore and allows users to click to join and actively collaborate in CiscoWebEx meetings. Using Cisco WebEx Meeting Center application on the iPhone, users can view what's being shared, see the meeting participant list, see the active speaker and chat with other meeting participants. In addition, users have the ability to take advantage of simultaneous web and audio conferencing capabilities from Cisco on both the 3G mobile and 802.11 wireless (Wi-Fi) networks.

In addition, users can set up a WebEx account from the Profile page in the iPhone application as well as view and start meetings that are scheduled. Users can start meetings from the iPhone and then assign presenter privileges to one of the attendees who joined on a computer.

Cisco says the solution supports multiple telephony configurations including SaaS-based telephony from Cisco WebEx Meeting Center, premises-based telephony from Cisco Unified MeetingPlace, or telephony from Cisco's service provider partners. (iPod touch users can join the web portion of the meeting, but will need to join the audio portion from a phone).

The download is free from the AppStore, but users need to have current subscriptions to the WebEx services to schedule or host a meeting; it is, however, free to attend any meetings. WebEx Meeting Center on the iPhone is localized in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

Future versions of the application will include Cisco WebEx Meeting Center as well as the ability to see meeting participants and the active speaker from Cisco Unified MeetingPlace. Cisco said that, it will also add the ability to move in-session Cisco WebEx Meeting Center and Cisco Unified MeetingPlace conferences from the Apple iPhone 3G to an office environment and back, by transferring the audio to a Cisco Unified IP Phone and the web conference to a computer.