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www.voip-news.comBy Robert Poe
Sometimes conference calling, email and chat aren't enough to get your point across to people in far-flung locations. You might need, for instance, to share documents and other visual materials as if you were in the same room. Unless everyone has time to get on a plane, the only answer in such cases is Web conferencing. A number of solutions are available, ranging from hosted services to software-based premises systems to hybrids. Choosing the right solution is one of the more complex technology decisions an enterprise has to make.
What Web Conferencing Can Do
Web-conferencing systems offer an enormous range of capabilities. Letting participants share documents with each other online is just the start. Users can often share whiteboards, see the activity on each other's computer desktops and even take control of each other's mouse and keyboard. They can use communication methods such as text chat, voice conferencing and video, preferably integrated to allow seamless transition from one to another. They can poll other users and break off for private sessions via any or all of the methods. They can also record, annotate and play back sessions.
Similarly, companies can use Web conferencing for a broad variety of activities. Holding online meetings is the most obvious. But education is also a major use, whether it involves instruction of in-house staff or providing information and training for external audiences such as customers and distributors. Web conferencing can also be ideal for product announcements, shareholder meetings and investor presentations.
What You Need to Consider
Before deciding on a solution, though, it's necessary to ask a number of questions to determine how Web-conferencing products differ from one another. A key question is whether a product is hosted or premises-based. According to Frost & Sullivan Roopam Jain, hosted or on-demand services currently account for 85 percent of Web-conferencing revenues.
A further distinction among premises solutions is whether they come complete with hardware, or are software installations that run on enterprises' existing servers. Another question is which, and how many, operating systems the solutions run on. And a distinction that has recently gained importance is whether they require client software running on participants' computers, or use Adobe Flash Player technology that frees them from that requirement.
The integration of voice is yet another major consideration. Solutions that lack it may require you to do all your talking through your regular phone on a separate call bridge, though they may offer the bridge as a free adjunct to their service. Others may include VoIP as an integrated part of the package, which can make switching from one method of communication to another easier. In some circumstances, the ability to record parts or all of sessions can be crucial. For instance, many companies in the financial and legal fields are subject to compliance rules that require them to record virtually every communication they have with or about clients.
Ease of integrating the conferencing solution with other corporate applications may also be a factor. That in turn means that the name of the vendor supplying the solution may be as important as the features the solution includes. Products from IBM Corp., for example, may be particularly attractive to companies that use IBM's Lotus Notes and Domino collaboration tools, noted Gartner Inc. vice president Thomas Eid, while Microsoft Corp.'s conferencing products will obviously integrate well with Microsoft Office applications.
The Web-Conferencing Leaders
Cisco Systems Inc. owns one of the biggest names in hosted Web conferencing, WebEx Meeting Center, as a result of its March 2007 purchase of WebEx Communications Inc. The pay-per-use service has integrated audio conferencing and its own built-in email. Users can share calendars, databases and documents, including everything from simple Microsoft Word files to complex 3-D documents.
IBM offers Lotus Sametime Unyte, the hosted counterpart to its premises-based Lotus Sametime software solution. IBM acquired the product, formerly called WebDialogs, in August 2007. It lets you hold meetings with a full range of collaboration capabilities for 5 to 500 participants. A "share" option lets you download a free plug-in and share your desktop with a colleague, or pay to share desktops with up to 25 others. Unyte Events adds capabilities such as registration, promotion, Q&A and reporting.
Another major player in hosted Web conferencing is Citrix Systems Inc.'s GoToMeeting. The Standard version allows up to 15 participants to conference online for a flat monthly fee, while the Corporate version boosts the number to 25 conferees. In addition, the Webinar and Corporate versions allow webinars with up to 1,000 attendees. Organizing, presenting and hosting sessions requires Windows computers, while Macintosh users can only attend sessions.
Microsoft's Live Meeting, also a hosted service, targets enterprises that have meetings with more than 250 attendees, and also those with limited IT staffs and expertise. It offers a number of training-oriented features such as handouts, breakout sessions and testing. It also integrates PSTN (public switched telephone network) and two-way VoIP calling in a single voice bridge.
Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat Connect Professional is available in both hosted and premises versions. For attendees, it requires nothing more than up-to-date Web browsers; the latest version of the Flash software, which is installed on some 98 percent of Internet-connected computers around the world; and having cookies enabled. Connect Professional provides streaming video, Flash animations, interactive simulations, quizzes and breakout rooms. You can buy it on a per-use, monthly, annual or software license basis, with the highest-end packages capable of serving up to 2,500 participants. It particularly targets Web meeting and eLearning activities such as self-paced training. A lower-end hosted version, Acrobat Connect, provides online meetings for up to 15 participants. And Adobe has just brought out ConnectNow, a free online Web conferencing service for up to three people. It is part of the newly introduced public beta version of Acrobat.com, a set of services that allows online word processing;PDF document creation; file sharing and storage; and video and VoIP conferencing.
Cisco also offers a premises-based Web conferencing product called Unified MeetingPlace. The latest version, 6.0, is Flash-based, while previous versions such as 5.4 are not. Cisco supplies both hardware and software, and the solution integrates with enterprise IT and phone systems. It includes both voice and video capabilities.
IBM's premises version, as noted, is Lotus Sametime, without the Unyte. It offers IM (instant messaging) and presence, with built-in VoIP conferencing and point-to-point video calling. Advanced versions offer broadcast tools like polling and announcements, as well as instant screen sharing.
AT&T Connect was called Interwise before the carrier acquired it. The product's developers have made it especially good at working with enterprise applications from major vendors, according to Gartner vice president Eid. It offers application and whiteboard sharing as well as chat, and integrates VoIP and PSTN voice conferencing in addition to video conferencing. It also includes such educational or public-event features such polling, hand raising, recording and reporting.
Microsoft's premises solution is the familiar Office Communications Server 2007. It particularly targets companies that need to keep their conferencing behind firewalls, such as financial and legal firms. It's also suitable for conferences with fewer than 250 participants. It can work with Live Meeting when a mixture of requirements makes a hybrid solution necessary, such as customer presentations with 200 attendees and shareholder meetings with 1,000.
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