According to Frost and Sullivan’s July 2008 World Web Conferencing Services Forecast, the web collaboration market is expected to grow at 22.5% CAGR through 2013! That’s the good news. In larger organizations that use web conferencing for a mix of internal, external and a combination of sessions there is growing evidence that WAN bandwidth is being heavily consumed. To significantly reduce WAN bandwidth cost while Web conferencing load increases, Cisco has introducing a hybrid model by introducing the WebEx Node for the ASR 1000. Tere’ Bracco Senior Marketing Manager for Network Systems and Security at Cisco joins the program to discuss web conferencing trends and the new hybrid model for WebEx.

Today’s collaborative infrastructure and evolving security landscape brings an abundance of risk. Newly adopted IT tools and services, often untried and vulnerable, allow cybercriminals to exploit them to sabotage or gain financially. The newest wave of threats such as Conficker, McColo, Srizbi etc often target personal data propagating via multiple blended vehicles such as web, email, and USB keys to bypass legacy security tools. Even strong security technologies are often unable to keep up with today’s attacks: they are too nimble, specialized, and targeted. Cisco’s new Security Intelligence Operations or SIO offering identifies threats in real time via global correlation so that businesses can be more secure in their IT defenses. Ambika Gadre, Director Product Marketing in the Cisco Security Technology Business Unit discusses SIO, reputation scoring, global correlation and a powerful approach to mitigating blended exploits from infecting your corporation.

Marlowe Fenne, Cisco Systems Solutions Marketing Manager in the Network Systems group joins me to talk about the IT Innovations forum and Cisco’s spring announcements. We discuss the business results of exploiting WAN Advantage, Webex Node, Virtual Connect, Security, Unified Communications, AXP, Switching, H1N1’s reminder of the importance of telecommuting and much more. Marlowe provides a sneak preview of the May 7th IT innovations Form too which I present at and you can attendee for free at http://www.ciscoitinnovationsforum.com .