Acquisitions

SAN JOSE, Calif. – July 8, 2021 – Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO)

Today, Cisco has completed the Socio Labs, Inc. Acquisition, a US-based, privately held modern event technology platform designed to power the hybrid events of the future. Socio will expand current Webex offerings beyond meetings, webinars and webcasts to now include large-scale, multi-session hybrid conferences.

Before the pandemic, most large-scale events were held in-person. In-person events create highly engaging experiences, but this can come at significant cost and limited reach, as attendees must travel to a central location.

During the pandemic, events went virtual. With virtual events, organizers were able to reach massive audiences around the world at a fraction of the price of in-person events. But most attendees found virtual events to be significantly less engaging because they missed the face-to-face interactions.

The future of events will be hybrid. Like the future of work, events will combine the best of both worlds to create novel experiences for both in-person and virtual events. Hybrid events will provide experiences with the high engagement of a physical event combined with the reach of a virtual event, giving organizers and attendees more options than ever.

With the addition of Socio to our portfolio, Cisco will enable event organizers to provide the same delightful experience to both in-person and virtual attendees for events of any type, size and format. Specifically, Socio provides the following benefits to event organizers.

• All-in-one solution: Everything you need to produce high quality virtual, in-person and hybrid events.
• Easy to use: Setup events of any size with fewer resources and in less time.
• Real-time insights: 360-degree insights to see what's working and what's not in real-time.
• Plays well with others: Designed to integrate seamlessly with your favorite platforms, apps and tools

Our vision is to provide the most seamless, inclusive, engaging and intelligent meeting and event attendee experience for everyone, regardless of location or device they use to join. We plan to seamlessly integrate Socio’s hybrid event management platform into the Webex Suite which will provide event organizers a single platform with everything they need to successfully host an in-person, virtual or hybrid event and engage with attendees in meaningful ways. More information about when the Socio integration will launch will come at a later date. Until then, Socio continues to be available for purchase separately on https://socio.events

Q: Can you explain Socio's offering?
A: Socio provides a feature-rich unified platform with capabilities for large events, as well as continuous engagement fostering community groups and ongoing discussions. It's an end-to-end, intuitive event management platform that powers virtual, hybrid and in-person events. It's ready for future hybrid events with common identity and feature parity across mobile-first (physical) and web-first (virtual) experiences.

Q: What is the difference between Webex Events and Socio's offering?
A: Socio will complement Webex Events. Webex Events is still the best choice for a one-time webinar or webcast. Socio can be used for multi-day, multi-session events and the individual sessions within a Socio event can be powered by Webex Events. 

Q: Why did Cisco choose Socio?
A: Socio's technology provides Cisco with a comprehensive ability to manage the full lifecycle of large-scale multi-day, multi-session conferences. The Socio platform will differentiate Webex's overall value in the market and provide a message beyond Meetings. Socio's technology will add a comprehensive solution to the Webex platform that Cisco's key competitors do not currently have.

Q: Why is now the right time to acquire Socio?

A: Budgets changed in 2020 as a result of the pandemic and moved to virtual events. Over the last several months, it's become clear that events will now be hybrid. The market will not return to the pre-pandemic norm of mainly in-person events. There is no vendor in the market that can provide a hybrid event management solution that can seamlessly blend virtual and in-person events.

Q: Cisco recently completed the Slido acquisition.  How does the Slido acquisition complement the Socio solution?
A:  Combining Socio Labs with Slido, an audience engagement technology Cisco acquired on May 3, 2021, Cisco  moves one step closer to achieving our vision for Webex of providing the most inclusive, engaging and intelligent meeting and event attendee experience for everyone – regardless of location or device used to join. The new combined solution will provide event organizers with endless opportunities allowing them to: 

• Host any type of event whether in-person, virtual or hybrid. 
• Create deeply engaging experiences combining in-person interactions with digital features like polling, Q&A, chat and real-time translation. 
• Go big with their events and reach audiences of up to 100,000 attendees at once.

By integrating Slido and Socio into the Webex platform, Cisco will be able to provide the most comprehensive internal and external event management solution on the market that no other vendor can match.

Socio Customers and Partners:

If you are an existing customer or partner of Socio and have questions about your product or service, please continue to contact your existing Socio representative.

Cisco Customers and Partners:

If you are an existing customer or partner of Cisco and have questions about your product or services, please continue to contact your existing Cisco representative.

Socio customers should continue to use the existing process for support on installed Socio products. Cisco will notify you in advance of any change to the support process.

Cisco customers should continue to use the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) for technical support on Cisco products. For more information about opening a technical support case and for regional TAC telephone numbers, refer to Cisco Worldwide Support Contacts.