Cisco expands from video to AR meetings with Webex Hologram

Cisco expands from video to AR meetings with Webex Hologram

Published: 19-11-2021
Updated: 31-01-2023

The American multinational corporation Cisco that produces and sells IT solutions, has recently added an AR Meetings platform to their portfolio of web-based experiences. The photorealistic and holographic AR meeting room solution is called Webex Hologram and goes up against the likes of Varjo and Meta (former Facebook).

What did Cisco announce?

The 36-year-old American multinational conglomerate, Cisco Systems, decided to expand its presence within the decentralized work environment with an AR meeting platform called Webex Hologram. The AR meeting platform will be added to the Webex suite. 

VR Expert - webex

Cisco has, since the pandemic, taken advantage of the extensive growth within the virtual collaboration market. Competing against the likes of Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom. The latter of which saw explosive growth during the pandemic.

As the market stands, the big three within video meetings are Microsoft, Zoom, and Cisco, in which competition has steepened. This context is behind Cisco’s strategic move towards AR holographic solutions: evolving their video software to augmented reality.

What is Webex Hologram?

Webex Hologram with the tagline: “the future of collaboration is here” is a platform that requires either a Magic Leap or Microsoft Hololens to function. The Webex Hologram is a holographic and photorealistic product solution able to portray 3D renders of the meeting participants. Comparably, Horizon Workrooms uses avatars. This advanced solution is realized through Cisco’s cloud rendering techniques. Partly rendering the participants in your meetings online and the other part locally on the AR headset, enabling a real-time holographic effect. This incidentally also alleviates some processing power required to run such a demanding technological solution by splitting it up into the cloud.

Questions then have inquired about bandwidth requirements as the meetings are partly streamed. Here Cisco promises its solution to run over today’s internet, even LTE, from its compression algorithms.

Currently, Webex Hologram is only open to select customers through a pilot program, with plans to expand the platform out to Beta, opening up to more enterprises.