Cisco WebEx

Cisco WebEx, formerly WebEx Communications Inc. is a company that provides on-demand collaboration, online meeting, web conferencing and videoconferencing applications. Its products include Meeting Center, Training Center, Event Center, Support Center, Sales Center, MeetMeNow, PCNow, WebEx AIM Pro Business Edition, WebEx WebOffice, and WebEx Connect. All WebEx products are part of the Cisco collaboration portfolio. All Cisco WebEx products are offered by Cisco Systems Inc.

Subrah Iyar and Min Zhu founded WebEx in 1996 under the name ActiveTouch. Zhu had co-founded Future Labs (one of the first companies to produce multi-point document collaboration software) in 1991. Zhu met Iyar, then a vice-president and general manager of Quarterdeck, when Quarterdeck acquired Future Labs in 1996. Iyar was named president of Future Labs, which had become a Quarterdeck subsidiary, and the same year Iyar and Zhu went on to co-found WebEx. On March 15, 2007, Cisco Systems announced it would acquire WebEx for $3.2 billion.

David Thompson, the first vice president of marketing at Activetouch, coined the name WebEx in late 1998 as the company transitioned from its original software business model to relaunch as a Saas company in 1999. Traveling Software which changed its name in September 1999 to LapLink Software Inc., originally owned a software product called WebEx, which shipped to the public in June 1996. The LapLink product called WebEx was a utility to be run as a companion to be used for offline web-browsing, a feature subsequently integrated within most commercial modern-day Web browsers.

Traveling Software registered the WebEx trademark in May 1996. In 1999, after the original founder of LapLink returned as CEO, Traveling Software/LapLink.com sold the rights to the WebEx name to the company known as WebEx.

Before the purchase by Cisco, WebEx was featured in the NASDAQ Global Select Market.

On March 15, 2007, Cisco Systems announced that it had agreed to pay $57 per share to acquire WebEx. The deal valued WebEx at about $3.2 billion, or $2.9 billion with WebEx's cash reserves factored into the price. WebEx's largest stockholder is Jan Baan with 9% of outstanding shares. In a press release Cisco said WebEx would "become a part of Cisco's Development Organization while maintaining its unique business model". Cisco has also said that its long-term plan is to absorb WebEx at both a technology and a sales level.