We’re excited to share the news about Cisco’s intent to acquire Slido!

  • 7 December 2020
  • 16 replies
  • 705 views
We’re excited to share the news about Cisco’s intent to acquire Slido!
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  • Slido Community Manager
  • 197 replies

We started Slido with the vision to transform how meetings and events are run around the world.

In the eight years since we began, the world has changed, no more so than in 2020. With millions of workers shifting to remote work, having the right technology in place to power their work and meetings is absolutely critical.

In today’s work environment, it has never been more important to connect and collaborate, no matter how, where or when we work together. We believe that the way we work has changed forever. In the years to come, much of our work will happen on video calls and virtual meetings.

We realized that if we want to impact millions of lives for better and truly transform how meetings and events are run around the World, we will need a strong partner. Therefore, we are excited to join Cisco to further their vision to make the Webex experience 10x better than in-person meetings and make sure everyone’s voice is heard.

While we will become part of Cisco and integrate into the Webex platform, we are committed to improving our core product experience and supporting our customers, no matter what tools they use in their business.

We are grateful to all of you for being with us on our journey so far. We look forward to becoming part of Cisco as we work to create the future of interactive meetings together.

You can read more on our blog here and on the Cisco blog here but feel free to share any questions you've got in the comments below. Lots of things will become clearer as we move closer to the official close next year.

 

Please ask all your questions though and we'll endeavour to answer them as fully as we can :point_down:


16 replies

Will the Teams integration still work after the move?

To be very honest as a customer of Slido this makes me nervous that I’ll lose the outstanding customer support (knowledgeable staff, quick answers, follow-up) that the Slido staff are known for.  I am also nervous that we might start seeing major un-needed changes to the platform without Cisco reaching out to the user community.

One thing I am excited about is that a company with a larger reputation owns Slido.  Hopefully Cisco can help Slido get approved on the Microsoft Teams App Security and Compliance list so my organization will approve the use of the Slido/Teams add-on.  Also that we’ll start seeing the ability for event registration and tracking of individual attendance (time in/time out per registrant) available for the users so we can offer CPE (Certified Professional Education) to our event attendees.

This is bad news isn’t it? Won’t this mean you will cease access to Slido as a standalone product? So I will have to become a Webex user to gain access to it eventually? I use Slido when I hold Zoom tutorials. I do not wish to use Webex I wish to carry on working with Zoom.

Wow! This is interesting.

As an educator, I’ve been using Slido a lot recently and promoting it in my institution. We can’t afford any fees right now due to budget constraints but faculty here have been enjoying the free version of Slido to better engage with students online. They’re loving it, as are the students. Now, with this new acquisition, are we going to start seeing cutbacks on the free version? Faculty put a lot of work prepping their courses and lesson plans using Slido. I’d hate to see all their hard work go to waste - especially since I’ve been the one pushing the use of slido!

Congratulations on the new deal,

Bobbi

The obvious question is the commitment to none-Cisco integrations going forward. How can we be sure these efforts will continue and improve?

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Hi Stu! Thanks for getting in touch. 

We know how important it is for you to use Slido with the tools you love. 

MS Teams is an important partner for us and lot of our key customers use it for their meetings. We are committed to not just support, but to actively invest into rich integrations with other video and presentation tools.

We’d love to hear your feedback on the MS Teams integration since it’s so fresh, feel free to leave us a note here

Many thanks,

Jo

Cisco understands the value of supporting Slido as a standalone product and building great integrations with other virtual meeting and presentation platforms.” [in the email you sent us]

“Understand” is not the same as “guarantee”… I hope you negotiated in the take-over that the integration of Slido with Zoom will go through, this was the main reason why I renewed my subscription… (I cannot wait to see this happening :-)

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Thank you for sharing your concerns CLA team! From the very beginning, we’ve strived to provide the best possible care to our customers and we want it to stay that way. 

While we will work closely on the Webex integration, we will keep supporting our users, improving our core product experience and building integrations with other tools including Microsoft Teams as you are using in your organization.  

In regards to the Microsoft Teams App Security & Compliance approval, our team submitted the details to them last week. The next step is that they’ll carry out some checks and we hope to have some news on this in early 2021. 

When it comes to event registration, we’ll be sure to log this request with our product team. 

Thanks for your continued support and if you have other questions, we’re happy to help!

Can you reassure us that Slido will still be available standalone so I can use it from e.g. Zoom? Won’t that be a problem since Zoom and Webex are competitors? I’m not talking about the integration, I just don’t want to be forced to use it with Webex. There is another product I use that Cisco bought recently for Webex and the result is that it will no longer be available standalone after March next year - the only way it will be available is through Webex. 

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This is bad news isn’t it? Won’t this mean you will cease access to Slido as a standalone product? So I will have to become a Webex user to gain access to it eventually? I use Slido when I hold Zoom tutorials. I do not wish to use Webex I wish to carry on working with Zoom.


Hi Mark,

Thank you for your questions. We believe this acquisition will bring lots of exciting product improvements to everyone, both Webex and non-Webex users. Cisco understands the value of supporting Slido as a standalone product. 

There will be no pressure for you to use Webex if you want to use Slido and you will still be able to use your Slido account with Zoom. 

We will keep on building and improving integrations with other video conferencing platforms such as Microsoft Teams, PowerPoint, Google Slides or Zoom as you mentioned.

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Wow! This is interesting.

As an educator, I’ve been using Slido a lot recently and promoting it in my institution. We can’t afford any fees right now due to budget constraints but faculty here have been enjoying the free version of Slido to better engage with students online. They’re loving it, as are the students. Now, with this new acquisition, are we going to start seeing cutbacks on the free version? Faculty put a lot of work prepping their courses and lesson plans using Slido. I’d hate to see all their hard work go to waste - especially since I’ve been the one pushing the use of slido!

Congratulations on the new deal,

Bobbi


Hi Bobbi,


Thanks so much for sharing. It’s fantastic to read about how your faculty is using Slido to engage students. It’s very close to our hearts as the idea of Slido was born in a classroom.

To your question, there are no immediate changes to the plans. Cisco understands the value of supporting Slido as a standalone product. Our commitment remains unchanged. We want to keep Slido available and affordable for anyone who wants to engage their audience. 
 

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The obvious question is the commitment to none-Cisco integrations going forward. How can we be sure these efforts will continue and improve?


Hey! Our commitment remains unchanged. Cisco understands the value of supporting Slido as a standalone product. We will keep on building great integrations with other virtual meeting and presentation platforms, supporting both Webex as non-Webex users.

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Can you reassure us that Slido will still be available standalone so I can use it from e.g. Zoom? Won’t that be a problem since Zoom and Webex are competitors? I’m not talking about the integration, I just don’t want to be forced to use it with Webex. There is another product I use that Cisco bought recently for Webex and the result is that it will no longer be available standalone after March next year - the only way it will be available is through Webex. 

 

Thanks for your follow up question, Mark! 

Slido will continue to be a standalone product and also continue to build integrations with other tools outside the Cisco ecosystem, so you will be able to continue using Slido as you have done up until now and alongside whatever tools you use in your business (and whether it is with our already existing integrations or not). You can watch their announcement from WebexOne where this message is reinforced. 

We may have some delays in releasing the Zoom integration as we will need to wait until Zoom open it up to all developers, however both we at Slido and Cisco are committed to building an open ecosystem of tools.

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Cisco understands the value of supporting Slido as a standalone product and building great integrations with other virtual meeting and presentation platforms.” [in the email you sent us]

“Understand” is not the same as “guarantee”… I hope you negotiated in the take-over that the integration of Slido with Zoom will go through, this was the main reason why I renewed my subscription… (I cannot wait to see this happening :-)


Hi there :) 

We definitely intend to move forward with the Zoom integration and will continue our discussions with the Zoom team to make this happen but we're still waiting on the documentation from Zoom to get started so we have no timeframe for when it'll be launched just yet.

Slido will remain a standalone product and thanks to Cisco’s commitment to an open ecosystem, we’ll continue the development of all our integrations as planned. 

Hello.  Any progress with this (the webex integration).  It still says coming soon.

 

Webex Meetings is on version 41.4 now, is there a version (time)of Webex you are targeting?

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Hi @jfranche , thanks for following up here.

We’re aiming to release the first version of the integration in the first half of May. Please stay tuned for the update!

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