SAN JOSE, Calif. June 26, 2012 -- Summer may be the time for vacations, but small business owners can't afford to be away from the office for long. To make the most of work and personal time, many plan to work remotely, on average, 18 days this summer, according to a new Cisco WebEx® survey of 500 U.S. small business owners.

Some will be staying in touch from beaches and National Parks for even longer. Fifteen percent of those surveyed intend to work remotely 36 days or more. Almost half of small business owners plan to work remotely for at least two weeks before the summer is out, the survey showed.

"The results demonstrate the extent to which telephone and video conferencing have become ingrained in the work habits of small business owners, since nearly half of the survey respondents say traditional, in-person meetings are becoming less relevant," said Glenn Bray, senior director, Cloud Collaboration Applications Technology Group, Cisco. "It's clear  small business owners need to stay "connected" to the office , even during the summer vacation season, and so we've given them the tools to not only meet, but also easily and efficiently manage content relevant for those meetings wherever they happen to be."

Summer or not, nearly one-fourth (23 percent) of the respondents said their companies rely on telecommuting, and more than one in 10 (13 percent) reimburse employees when they buy laptops, mobile phones or tablets. It appears many respondents prefer working remotely to avoid hassles and inconveniences often associated with traditional office meetings. In addition, respondents claim their biggest pet peeves about in-person meetings are that they run longer than planned (29%), and are hard to organize because of conflicting schedules (25 percent).

The survey was conducted for Cisco by Wakefield Research between June 6 and June 14, involving the owners of businesses with 100 or fewer employees. The poll has a margin of error of 4.4%.

To kick off the summer, Cisco WebEx is sponsoring an online contest entitled "WebEx Mobile Fridays" which asks WebEx users to submit a photo and brief description of where they are and how they are using WebEx.  Each week a winner will be selected randomly and will receive a $25 Amazon gift card. Participants can enter at http://csc0.ly/Summer2012.

Cisco WebEx Meetings have been downloaded for mobile devices more than three million times, and on average 31 million people attend a WebEx meeting per month.  Cisco recently announced that it was extending the reach and appeal of WebEx Meetings by introducing a free version, which will support up to three attendees in a meeting. In addition to the free version, WebEx® also offers two premium plans, both of which feature full HD video, range in price from $19-$45 a month, and can accommodate eight to 25 attendees. WebEx Meetings runs on most popular computing devices, including Apple and Android mobile phones and tablets.

Supporting Resources

• For more product details and information, visit the Cisco WebEx, Cisco WebEx Meetings, Why WebEx and Cisco WebEx Cloud pages for more detail.

• For more information about Cisco Collaboration announcements, activities and solutions, engage with us through social media: Cisco Collaboration Community, @CiscoCollab on Twitter, and Cisco Collaboration on Facebook. And, hear from our Cisco Collaboration business and product leaders through our Cisco Collaboration Blog.

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About Cisco Collaboration

From award-winning IP communications to mobility, customer care, Web conferencing, messaging, enterprise social software, and interoperable TelePresence experiences, Cisco brings together network-based, integrated collaboration solutions based on open standards. These solutions offered across on-premise, cloud-based or virtualized platforms, as well as services from Cisco and our partners, are designed to help promote business growth, innovation and productivity. They are also designed to help accelerate team performance, protect investments, and simplify the process of finding the right people and information

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