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September 25, 2006

WebEX to go mobile with SoonR

Marshall Kirkpatrick

11 comments »

Web conferencing giant WebEX and mobile/PC connecting startup SoonR announced tonight that they have entered a partnership that will let users access WebEX conferences via mobile devices. WebEX has launched a new platform called WebEX connect which brings together select third party services to be integrated with the company’s web conferencing. Mobile access to WebEX is expected to be available in 3 to 6 months.

The web conferencing space is growing increasingly competitive and the high-end WebEX has got to continue to innovate to compete with the much less expensive GoToMeeting, Adobe’s Breeze and a number of free web conferencing solutions like DimDim that are coming to market.

Unlike Salesforce’s AppExchange, which offers API access to a large number of developers and on occasion leads to an acquisition (see the Kieden deal) WebEX appears to be opening a much more limited platform and hiring select outside partners to integrate their services.

SoonR is a company we’ve profiled here before, it allows users to search and access files on their desktop computers from more than 450 types of mobile phones. This isn’t the first application the company has moved to offer via mobile devices, they offer Skype by phone. SoonR has been making a lot of big announcements lately; last week they released what they call the first mobile AJAX service in conjunction with Opera Mobile and the closed a Series A round of funding with $6 million lead by Clearstone Venture Partners and Intel Capital.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Startups.in/India

    September 25th, 2006 at 10:24 pm

    Confused! Does this mean users can access the presentation used during the conference over mobile devices?

  2. Song Huang

    September 25th, 2006 at 11:59 pm

    First, I am with SoonR. Yes, users can be set up for mobile access to a presentation. SoonR can mobilize over 75 file types including Microsoft Office files like PowerPoint presentations. If the presentation used during a conference was made available on a desktop PC, users can share that folder/presentation to any number of people on their mobile phones. SoonR’s technology will make the presentation viewable on the mobile phone in an efficient manner regardless of the device type. All this happens without any proprietary software on the phone. Users simply need a PCNow Mobile account.

    This is but a single feature of the mobile delivery platform. Users can also access desktop search, Outlook, and Skype on regular mobile phones.

  3. Startups.in/India

    September 26th, 2006 at 12:34 am

    Thanks Song Huang. That is impressive. It indeed would be a cool feature to display and sync the presentations with mobile users in real time. But I’m doubtful about the mobile user experience. How well would the multimedia presentations be displayed on the mobile devices?

  4. Jason M. Lemkin

    September 26th, 2006 at 1:34 pm

    “WebEX appears to be opening a much more limited platform and hiring select outside partners to integrate their services.” I think the event last night perhaps suggested that in fact when WebEx Connect fully opens up, it will shoot for as many partners as possible. Broader than Salesforce, if perhaps not as deep, seemed to be the goal.

  5. mesattack

    September 26th, 2006 at 4:41 pm

    Could with all agree to stop with the xxxr site names?

  6. Song Huang

    September 27th, 2006 at 11:23 am

    Hey mesattack, you know if all the “normal” spellings of words were not all owned by various domain name squatters, then we could stop with all the xxxr names. Have you tried to get a one work five letter domain name recently that was not misspelled or shortened?

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