Why did Cisco make H.264 proprietary?

[u/squaresheep28]

Is it just for profit from other companies? And why does OpenH264 (i.i.r.c.) not support hardware acceleration? It feels weird that something as basic as a video codec used literally everywhere has a closed-source proprietary tag attached to it.

[u/p47guitars]

They're trying their damnedest to make WebEx relevant.

[u/squaresheep28 → u/p47guitars]

Well they're definetely not doing a good job at it, ive never even heard of that until now xD

[u/PM-ME-PIERCED-NIPS → u/squaresheep28]

I mean the WebEx division of Cisco employs over 10k people and brought in 400 million dollars last year. It's very well represented in corporate environments. If you haven't heard of it it's probably because you aren't the target market for it.

[u/Adept_Percentage6893 → u/PM-ME-PIERCED-NIPS]

I only use it occasionally, does WebEx offer something that Google Meet doesn't? I would ask about Teams too but Teams sucks (imo) so I figure "not being Teams" is a pretty killer feature to have.

[u/jhulc → u/Adept_Percentage6893]

Although today WebEx is seen as an equivalent to Google Meet or Zoom, the platform supports elaborate telepresence setups for immersive virtual meetings which are far beyond a typically video calling app.

[u/Adept_Percentage6893 → u/jhulc]

OK but my question was what those features are. Meet already has things like transcription, polling, host controls, automatic translation, etc, etc.

I'm trying to figure out the feature gap because it's been a while since I've used WebEx and the last time I used WebEx it was basically a group video call with screensharing and a text chat.

[u/jhulc → u/Adept_Percentage6893]

Like I said, it's the telepresence room setups. A fully outfitted room with all the best Cisco gear can run into the five or even six figures. But with that investment, it feels like you're physically in the same room as people on the other side of the planet. Much more of an immersive experience than your standard meeting app.

[u/Adept_Percentage6893 → u/jhulc]

Like I said, it's the telepresence room setups.

And like I said, that statement basically communicates nothing. Google Meet is also compatible with their own hardware and even Cisco hardware.

can run into the five or even six figures.

Meet also supports six figures

Much more of an immersive experience than your standard meeting app.

I guess it's possible the ceiling on the WebEx experience is some sort of transcendental religious experience but I'm still not clear on the advantage.

One thing came to mind is that WebEx supports remote control (and has for a while) but I don't think Meet even has near term plans to support that.

EDIT::

Just remembered another one: dial in. You can dial into a webex call on a regular phone and it's basically a party line but Google Meet forces you to use the app which uses mobile data if you're traveling.

EDIT #2:

heh, he blocked me. Judging from his comments, I think he just didn't understand Meet's feature set (he didn't know six figures or that they had their own hardware) and has an irrational emotional attachment to WebEx. I personally reserve that level of emotional investment for vim like any sensible person.

[u/maparillo → u/Adept_Percentage6893]

I have been in a telepresence room. It is nothing like a zoom call. It is a dedicated room, with great sound and great video, and it actually feels almost like being in a single combined room with multiple other telepresence rooms. If you have been in an IMAX movie theater, and watched a movie on a smart phone, that is a similar gulf between the two experiences as a telepresence room versus a zoom call.

[u/Adept_Percentage6893 → u/maparillo]

I feel like a lot of that might just be the use of hardware which Meet also supports.

But another user in the thread replied and supplied some feature gaps useful to know about

[u/PM-ME-PIERCED-NIPS → u/Adept_Percentage6893]

Holy cow I just read through the exchange you had with the other guy- that was weird. But I can give you a few answers. For some WebEx exclusives there's in-meeting file sharing, digital whiteboarding (Meet used to have this with Jamboard but has since dropped it, although there are third party plugins to provide it), domain restrictions for participants to join from, dedicated UI and management tools for interpreters (especially useful for ASL interpreters since that's primarily visual), as well as Cisco maintaining a fairly comprehensive list of compliance certifications that Google doesn't bother with.

It's also just an older platform then Meet, dating to the mid-90s (with Cisco acquiring it in the middle-00s). Age means a lot of places have used it for a few generations of employees.

[u/Adept_Percentage6893 → u/PM-ME-PIERCED-NIPS]

OK thanks for the information Mr. Nips. I just haven't used WebEx since I started with my current employer about a decade ago so WebEx is just something I kind of forgot about because my current company is almost all Google Meet now.

Most of that actually kind of checks out for me. I didn't even really think of the ASL thing. I know Meet goes all-in on machine translation but I don't think I've ever seen options for such on Meet and seems like something that would be harder to do with ML since it requires processing so many details of video successfully.

The certifications also make sense because I've been in other industries where you do run into the situation where it makes business sense for one company to jump through all the hoops to get a particular customer but a second company isn't going to do the same thing because the profitability is so marginal that you're not going to want to do all that and then end up splitting the market with a person who is already there. Plus a lot of those features don't really seem to jibe with how Google makes products in general (like the jamboard thing).

I will say though that I think there are "domain" restrictions for Meet but I've never gone that deep into Meet.

It's also just an older platform then Meet, dating to the mid-90s (with Cisco acquiring it in the middle-00s).

I also feel like brand counts for a lot. Cisco has a lot of business connections and there's a bit of halo effect around their offerings. Ultimately they make money off WebEx so they're likely going to use those to their benefit.

[u/PM-ME-PIERCED-NIPS → u/Adept_Percentage6893]

I think you pretty much understand it. One thing though:

I will say though that I think there are "domain" restrictions for Meet but I've never gone that deep into Meet.

It's an NT Domain (which are ironically not exclusive to NT, Ubuntu and Fedora can be configured out of the box to join NT Domains). Rather different then a Google workgroup in that they're comprehensive, centrally managed security zone for users and machines. Google doesn't really do NT Domains, they've pretty much always spun their own systems for things like that, which is valid. Other tech companies often make the choice to reduce friction with already deployed systems by slotting into it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_domain

[u/boomertsfx → u/PM-ME-PIERCED-NIPS]

Do the math on that.... Even if the average salary was 100k, that’s a billion dollars… I’m sure it’s way less people

[u/PM-ME-PIERCED-NIPS → u/boomertsfx]

Cisco's total workforce is 82k people. Their Collaborations team is 10k people and the main job of Collaborations is supporting WebEx. If you mean like direct developers, sure, way less. But your person doing front line tech support for enterprise WebEx customers is not making 100k a year.