The company was promoting its new Oracle WebCenter product (or platform if you prefer). WebCenter is supposed to be a way for developers to combine and integrate enterprise applications and Web-aware services "including business applications, enterprise content, business intelligence, enterprise search, communication and collaboration services, and Web 2.0-centric applications." (Emphasis is mine)

When a company the size and nature of Oracle starts emphasizing the word "collaboration" in their public and press announcements, there is likely to be an announcement forthcoming that is of interest to this blog. With IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft all making major public business statements in this arena (accompanied by product announcements and/or web conferencing acquisitions), it is only natural to expect Oracle to fill out the field with a competitive position.

I’m not an Oracle user, so I don’t have experience with their product offerings in the conferencing and collaboration space. I decided to do a little searching on the Web and their corporate site and found that Oracle has had communications products on offer for its customers for some time now. The website currently labels the products "Oracle Real-Time Collaboration 10g" and there are a few documents available for review or download. All the documents are dated August 2005 and I found outdated hyperlinks in them that no longer go anywhere.

I looked up some tutorials and user guides for Oracle’s web conferencing product on enterprise and educational sites (companies often post educational materials for their employees on how to use the software they have bought). I don’t know how old the materials are that I found, but they included some rather severe restrictions on use of the conferencing software.

Of course the hosting company must have the Oracle application server and database installed as a prerequisite. But it looks like the web conferencing software is very Microsoft dependent. Functions such as text chat are not available on Netscape browsers… Only Internet Explorer is supported. A host can share Microsoft documents by converting them to HTML pages — only supported on a Windows machine with Microsoft Office installed. (Again, these requirements may well be obsolete… I can’t tell from the current information on the Oracle website).

I thought it was a little strange that there wasn’t any more recent information or announcements about web conferencing or collaboration on the Oracle site. I took a look at an Oracle collaboration user forum to see if it was getting any customer activity and saw that the most recent message seemed to reflect my own curiosity, with a fascinating answer:

September 5, 2007: "Anybody concerned over the lack of information on the Oracle Website regarding Collaboration Suite. It seems to be disappearing?"

October 3, 2007: "No it is not. However Oracle is just integration [sic] some new products (eg Stellent) into the new Collaboration Suite called Beehive (internal codename). They are using this internally now for a couple of weeks. I guess that there will be more news soon."

Hmmm… A rumored new internal release (with a cute codename, no less!) and presentations playing up Oracle’s stand on enterprise collaboration. The crystal ball says to stand by for more announcements from the company to keep them in the ring with the other major players in the enterprise platform world.

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Of course I owe it to iLinc to start off the parade, since their statement was the impetus for the project. Mark Yeager is vice president of marketing at the company. Mark says that as a direct competitor to WebEx in the same market space, the announcement has been a short-term boost for iLinc. Some prospective customers who were making a vendor decision have elected not to get in the middle of an acquisition where they don’t know howsupport and contracts will be handled by the new owners. He says iLinc can also push the idea of being solely focused on conferencing, while the service is not central to Cisco’s business. He is also delighted with the valuation that Cisco came up with for WebEx, as it may make the investor community smile a little more brightly on other public web conferencing companies.

Mark also points out that the fear and uncertainty factor in the new ownership affects potential business partners looking to work with a web conferencing vendor. A company in a space such as CRM, social collaboration, or e-Learning that wants to add integration with a web conferencing vendor might prefer to do business with a smaller, more focused entity.

Mark finished with a compliment to the WebEx "sales and marketing machine." They have been remarkably important in promoting and evangelizing web conferencing as a mainstream business tool and Mark says he hopes that Cisco doesn’t "crush" the new acquisition as they have occasionally done with past purchases.

Isaac Garcia came at the question from his perspective as CEO and founder of Central Desktop, a company that combines web conferencing with a larger suite of shared workspace collaboration services. He pointed at WebEx’s web-based sales model for small and medium business (SMB) customers. It is largely a matter of making sure they are seen everywhere on the web and letting prospects come to them. Isaac saysthat Cisco doesn’t have that kind of an approach and will have to learn from WebEx if they are to act on their statements about using WebEx as an entree into the SMB world. Isaac thinks it is more likely that WebEx will become more of an enterprise tool than the other way ’round. He says it is very difficult to move downmarket from a large, expensive, full-featured enterprise utility to something more palatable to an SMB world. You can’t afford to remove features and functionality to justify a lower pricebecause your differentiation goes away.

Although Central Desktop offers its own version of a unified collaboration platform, Isaac doesn’t feel that he is likely to get into competition with a Cisco/WebEx offering in that area. He says that the larger company has to justify and maintain a massive sales overhead with big ticket enterprise sales. Central Desktop as a smaller vendor can scale their operations to handle volumes of lower-priced sales to SMBs. As he put it: "They won’t want to compete in the small market. It’s too bloody down here! Largerenterprises with their large channels are not as precise and efficient as many of the smaller vendors are."

Brainshark offers yet another view of the deal, as they don’t compete in the web conferencing arena at all. They offer an alternative to live webcasts with recorded events that integrate lead tracking services. Joe Gustafson, the CEO of Brainshark, was initially surprised at the thought that Cisco would be interested in an application software purchase that didn’t directly link to their core hardware business.But he thinks that all the attention given to the use of web-delivered communications is good for the industry as a whole. He had been worried that publicity and attention had been languishing, especially with Microsoft all but ignoring web conferencing after buying Placeware and renaming it to Live Meeting. He is interested in seeing whether Cisco buries WebEx in their platform as an enabling technology supporting an overall infrastructure play or keeps working on diverse applications such as WebEx’s Sales Center,Training Center, Event Center, and so on. He thinks that if Cisco leaves the WebEx business alone, it is likely to be more successful and help the industry hit the high growth projections put forth by several analysts. Joe was skeptical about Cisco’s ability to move down into the SMB market as well. They have traditionally sold to enterprise IT departments who like to control everything centrally. SaaS is attractive to business units who don’t want to worry about setup and maintenance. They just want touse a service and move on with their business.

I made overtures to two of WebEx’s most well known direct competitors… Adobe (with its Acrobat Connect product) and Citrix (makers of GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar). Neither company wanted to be interviewed on the subject. Citrix did send along a prepared statement in an email message saying that Cisco’spurchase "underscores the huge market potential of real time collaboration technologies." Nothing too earth-shaking there.

And as always, everybody waits with bated breath to see when and whether the long-touted Unified Communications vision from Microsoft will come to fruition with web conferencing tied in to all its other functions.

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So reads the opening paragraph of a new press release out of Germany. Wonderful! A new resource for potential web conferencing customers, helping them separate marketing hype from real, objective testing. We need a lot more of that. Of course I immediately zipped over to the site to see what they had to say.

The first thing that struck me as unusual was the fact that there were no links to a product or service provider that would explain why somebody would take the time, effort, and expense to create the site and pay for its hosting. There weren’t any banner ads, sponsors, or even standard Google text ads sprinkled around the site. Was this truly an altruistic gift to us, with no strings attached and no potential revenue stream for the creators? Past precedents and the business model of the Web make that seem unlikely.

Then I went to their summary chart of results. At the bottom of the page it declared Citrix GoToMeeting the winner of the competition. Then it offered a “Free trial account with the winning solution.” There is a hyperlink to the trial registration site. That’s strange… the other three vendors also have free trials available through direct links. Why aren’t they listed on the site for easy customer comparison?

So I dug deeper. I checked the comments in the various feature fields. Starting with the first entry under “Ease of use” (Solution design/architecture) I find these comments for GoToMeeting: “Quick, easy and secure. Solution is quick and easy to use thanks to its low complexity; high cost transparency.” Hmmm… That sounds like marketing copy that doesn’t tell us anything. Quick, easy, and secure are generic adjectives and not very descriptive of a specific architecture or design. “High cost transparency” may be a mangled translation from the original German, but I can’t figure out what it means.

“Planning effort” for GoToMeeting: “Planning is simple and intuitive.” Kind of fuzzy, but encouraging in a generic way.

“Solution complexity” for GoToMeeting: “Intuitive user interface thanks to clearly structured menu design.” Ummm, okay. Not a lot of specifics here either. What about the other tools? Live Meeting and WebEx both get: “Highly complex due to wide-ranging features…” Live Meeting “requires extensive FAQs and online support” while WebEx has “options that few users really need.” That’s a sweeping generalization of feature needs for the entire market! And strangely, Adobe Acrobat Connect has no comment at all.

By this time, I’m smelling a marketing machine at work. I spent a long time in enterprise software marketing myself. Some pawing through links took me to the website of the owners and creators of this utility. It is Publicare Marketing Communications GmbH. An email marketing firm put together a comparison of web conferencing vendors? How strange! Let’s check their website and look for a client list. I don’t speak German, but I think I can recognize some corporate names in the following sentence: “Zu unseren Kunden zahlen Unternehmen wie American Express, Citrix Systems, Compuware, Motorola und Ravensburger.” Hey, kids! I just found Waldo!

Now I bear no ill will towards Citrix and GoToMeeting. I rather like their software and I think it works well. In a short time, they have moved from a small-time also-ran to a major competitor in the web conferencing world. I particularly like the fact that they recently expanded to handle formal events with GoToWebinar. But this is an example of underhanded and deceptive marketing practice and that really bugs me. If you want to tout your own product, do it. Marketing is important and serves a purpose. But give your readers the courtesy of knowing who has sponsored the work. And don’t start out with a bald-faced lie stating that you are presenting “a vendor-independent assessment.” For shame!

By the way, for past articles and opinions on the confusing subject of webinar and web conferencing vendor selection, you can browse these entries in the blog:

• Comparing Web Conferencing Comparisons
• New TMR Report on e-Learning Conferencing Products
• Summary of Forrester/WebEx Wave Webinar
• Vendor Comparison Available
• How To Grill A Web Conferencing Vendor
• Picking Through A Plethora of Providers

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With a background in software development and marketing, Ken has been producing and delivering business webinars since 1999. His background in public speaking, radio, stage acting, and training has given him a unique perspective on what it takes to create a compelling and effective presentation. Currently Ken offers consulting services through his company Webinar Success (www.wsuccess.com).

He talks about the fact that when you want to do nothing more than show off a piece of software on your computer to another individual at a remote computer, you shouldn’t have to worry about client downloads, browser compatibility, distracting window frames, or additional functionality of any kind. Just broadcast the contents of your desktop to the other machine. End of story.

At one point, he makes the claim that he’s “used every screen-sharing system and, from this perspective, they’re roughly the same.” Now, I don’t know Mr. Udell and there’s no reason for me to doubt his sincerity. But if he has really tried every screen-sharing system, he hasn’t had much time left to do his other work! The field for one-to-one collaborative web conferencing is so crowded with smaller players and new entrants that it is overwhelming.

I have forty vendors listed on my Webinar Success Vendor Links page. Robin Good has 24 vendors reviewed on his site (and we each have some that aren’t overlaps). David Woolley has an amazing 244 entries on his Think Of It Guide to Real-Time Conferencing. Yow! And there’s no consistency in the subject. Vendors change their software capabilities all the time. New entrants continue to surface (I just got notice of a new company in Alpha Test that is looking for early guinea pigs, developers, and investors. It is 1VideoConference and I haven’t looked at it yet.)

For just this reason, I generally hate dealing with the limited functionality, lower-cost vendors and products in the web collaboration space. I prefer to concentrate on the enterprise-class vendors that can support larger public events. That’s why I’m happy to mention Robin and David as alternate information sources when selecting collaboration software.

With all that preamble aside, Mr. Udell makes an excellent point. Screen sharing (aka application sharing, desktop sharing, frame sharing) seems like it should be a quick ‘n dirty function that doesn’t distract from the content being shared. It almost never achieves this goal.

The first and biggest problem is that there are a lot of pixels involved in forming a full screen image and they can change very quickly as you work with an application or multiple windows on a desktop. Graphics processors use very fast dedicated computing processors, memory caches, and dedicated video buses to shove things to your monitor quickly enough to give the illusion of smooth motion. The Internet is not that good at disassembling, transmitting, and reassembling huge amounts of information at those speeds. So the software packages are facing a technical challenge before they even get to their own functionality.

One of the best ways to lower this hurdle is to reduce the amount of information you send from computer to computer. I know that GoToMeeting has this kind of functionality built in, but I don’t know who else tries it. In this case, the software monitors only pixel changes within the share frame and sends updates to the receiving end. Anything in the image that is static doesn’t get updated. That can make for smoother cursor movement over a still background and nice fluidity for things like entering data in form fields. But the software is doing a tremendous amount of work to monitor the video image before each microsecond of transmission and there are still times when large portions of the screen change rapidly.

The question of screen resolutions and aspect ratios can’t be ignored either. People not only run their video monitors at different resolutions, but the laptop community now features a range of widescreen displays that changes the fundamental perspective of the screen image. If the sharing software has to spend time figuring out whether the broadcast image is on or off the visible area of the recipient’s screen so it can display and update scroll bars, that’s another chunk of processing that slows down the smooth update of the content.

But that’s still not the main thrust of Mr. Udell’s message. He concludes with the statement that as soon as some vendor creates a stripped-down screen sharing application that smoothly shows a screen image and has no other features, “the world will beat a path to its door.” I don’t agree. Business users tend to shop on the basis of every feature they can think of. They build RFI spreadsheets with dozens of checkmark boxes to see how loaded the software is. They don’t ever want to get caught at some point in the future with a functionality need they didn’t originally think of that can’t be done by their software. Then they would have to go through ANOTHER selection process in order to cover the new requirement, and nobody wants that. So they overcompensate on the front end.

And quite honestly, vendors can’t compete very well (ie: profitably) on a commoditized functionality like screen sharing without adding in some kind of marketing-visible differentiator. Saying you do only one basic task that everyone else SAYS they do (even if you really can do it better) and having no additional sales points is unlikely to get you to the point where enough people will even try you out so that you can prove your superiority in the mass market. If you want a real world example, look at all the web conferencing vendors touting their strong support for video conferencing and images of each speaker. I have talked to many of the vendors about this subject and they tend to say the same thing in off-the-record statements… It’s a cute marketing feature and all their prospects say it’s very important, but after the first month or two of product usage, the utilization of webcam speaker video drops to a very low percentage. Webcams don’t flatter the speaker in a home or office environment, they look unprofessional, and they often distract from the message. Plus, they’re kind of a pain to work with. And yet… try to find a major vendor that doesn’t trumpet their webcam support!

So how could a vendor profitably support Mr. Udell’s desire? I see one obvious path… Give away the basic functionality to gain market awareness and penetration, and then try to sell people on upgrading to a more feature-rich paid service. Let’s say that Citrix with its fancy underlying screen sharing algorithms wants to get more people hooked. They create a bare bones screen sharing application of the sort that Mr. Udell visualizes. No extra windows, no white boarding, no chat, no presence, no IM, no remote desktop access of the recipient’s machine. They give this away as a free download. Then as people get used to the fast response time and general look and feel, they can come back to Citrix and ask if it can support more functionality. Bingo, a new customer for the paid software.

As for me, I’ll stick with the vendors supporting full scale webinars. Registration pages, PowerPoint conversion, multiple annotation controls, question management, password security, email invitations and so on. It’s easier to differentiate the competitors, there are a smaller number to choose from, and it’s a more lucrative market financially. To each his own!

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With a background in software development and marketing, Ken has been producing and delivering business webinars since 1999. His background in public speaking, radio, stage acting, and training has given him a unique perspective on what it takes to create a compelling and effective presentation. Currently Ken offers consulting services through his company Webinar Success (www.wsuccess.com).

Everything was going great…we were both working from home and enjoying small successes. However, we soon realized that text could only go so far, especially when we hired several employees.

Text messaging was slow, and was “noisy” when several people were in a chatroom. We quickly needed a solution.

Fortunately, we discovered web-based conferencing. Web-based conferencing has several flavors, including peer-to-peer direct conferencing, remote server hosting, and shared remote hosting.

They all have their own benefits and disadvantages, which will be explained. First, general web-based conferencing has several advantages over call conferencing, which is done on phone lines. Web based conferencing includes audio and video, and displaying presentations such as powerpoint, making it far superior to call conferences.

However, web-based conferencing does have several drawbacks. If users in your internet meeting dont have sufficient bandwidth, the call conference can become laggy for all participants.

Fortunately, broadband penetration is growing by leaps and bounds throughout each country yearly. Throughout the coming years, this issue will slowly disappear, as less and less dial-up accounts are used, especially in business settings.

As stated, web-based conferencing does come in several flavors. The cheapest is peer-to-peer direct conferencing, in which one computer acts as the host and others connect to that computer. This is a great solution for a business in which the main office has an excellent internet connection that can be utilized.

However, direct hosting usually does not support as many features such as powerpoint sharing among clients, that remote hosting can offer. The big disadvantage of remote hosting is the cost, which can be hundreds of dollars a month in membership fees.

Whichever conferencing solution you find will surely increase productivity for your online meetings. Web-based conferencing is a huge improvement over chatrooms, due to audio, video, and slide sharing. It has greatly helped my business, where all programmers work from home, and can surely help for you as well.

For more info click :

Review.ThePersonalHosting.com

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Dan Goggins is an entrepreneur who is interested in real estate, computer programming, and family life. You can read about his experiences and advice about Video Conferencing.

The chalkboard and flip charts were fully stocked with fresh chalk, clean brushes and brand-new Sharpie markers. There were three thermoses of organic coffee, which never seemed to empty, no matter how many cups were consumed. The overhead projector and the A/B/C switch (attached to the three laptops used by the presenters) were wired and the movie screen behind the podium automatically raised and lowered at the push of a button. Sizing up the situation at half past seven o’clock in the morning, Bruno, Frank and I smiled, each knowing something interesting was going to happen in just a few short hours.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of speaking at the inaugural Search Engine Business World seminar held at the downtown campus of Vancouver ‘s Simon Fraser University . The event was a success though registrations were slightly lower than expected. The number of attendees was relatively small but based on the names of the corporations they work for; the collective advertising budgets they work with are enormous.

Speaking to a room made up primarily of corporate executives is somewhat different than other forums where the audience is generally the IT crowd. It is easier to speak to a room full of executives than it is to speak to a room full of techies. The executives have absolutely nothing to prove to each other and are willing to accept the panel as experts in our fields. The attendees have, by and large, benefited from a classical education and it shows in their manners, their language and their depth of understanding. The session feels more honest and the audience feels more willing to make a connection with the speakers.

The tone and phrasing of questions is milder and often clearer, even if the person asking the question is sometimes unclear about a few technical concepts or advances. Along with the five-star treatment, there is a healthy measure of respect in this room from both sides of the podium. The conference eventually becomes a very interesting, agenda driven conversation between business people and highly qualified technicians.

Here are a few observations I walked away with.

First of all, the event was well received by the audience. The format, lower number of attendees and the overall attitude of the group allowed for a more intimate conversation. This gave the presenters enough room to work from one idea to another. The environment was crucial to the event.

Secondly, though their website doesn’t necessarily show it, the execs have learned a lot about search engines and search engine marketing. They are fascinated with the world of search from a number of different angles. For instance, a portion of my presentation dealt with the evolution of search engines and the evolution of SEO techniques. As I assumed, the audience was very interested in the general history of search engines and I saw a number of people nodding or smiling when various names were mentioned. I used the history and evolution of search to demonstrate how SEO techniques have evolved over time. By knitting the history of search with the evolution of SEO technique, I hoped to address concerns about redirects, doorway pages, link-farming, and other spammy techniques that have become synonymous with SEO in the mainstream press.

This approach led to my third observation. There is a perpetual knowledge gap among corporate executives when it comes to IT, their corporate websites and search marketing. Without a doubt, they understand the “big picture” perfectly well. It is the little things, the numerous fine details of how the machine actually works that they often face problems with. Based on my experience yesterday, the executives came to the presentation already knowing this. That’s why they were there without people from their IT departments.

The people I presented to yesterday have experience managing the people who run their search marketing campaigns, but for the most part were really not satisfied with the results of those efforts. They either want to micro-manage in house SEO and SEM efforts, or they want to learn how to properly outsource it.

The knowledge gap appears to be one of language and definition more than a lack of conceptual understanding on the part of the execs. While they don’t necessarily expect themselves to be on the cutting edge of technology, they realize they need to know more about how the medium is, and can be used for marketing.

A simple example of this is the use of the word “Keywords”. It is impossible to address SEO without using the word in several sentences. The word has two distinct meanings, one more relevant than the other. Keywords are found on a document and in the source code.

Many of the attendees understood the word to mean the Meta tag, period. It took me a few minutes to realize why many of them were not quite getting it when I was speaking about keywords found ON a document. I had to take about 90 seconds to clarify the difference. That’s when I made a fourth observation.

Even when I stressed that the keyword Meta tag is not an important or powerful tool, questions often drifted back towards the use of it. It happened at least twice as the seminar progressed. In both instances, I found the executive was holding on to the last information he or she had received, likely from their IT department. In order to comfortably let go of one idea and start to see another, they had to push a bit to test the strength of the limb they suspected I had ventured out on.

For the past few years, their firms have been using search marketing in one way or another and they have absorbed a lot of information in that time. Some of them confessed to feeling overwhelmed during the session, while others were furiously reconsidering a number of assumptions they had made about search marketing.

The knowledge behind their assumptions comes from two primary sources, the IT workers in their offices and business media relevant to their industries. Members of the IT department forwarded much of the technical information they received about search marketing. They know they need to challenge these assumptions, especially in light of the thumping some of their sites have taken as a result of the Jagger/Big Daddy updates at Google. They are going to be attending a lot more conferences, seminars and workshops in the future.

A fifth and final observation is that the executive level is learning, en masse, that the world of search and search marketing is moving faster than their already beleaguered IT departments can keep up with. Corporate executives are people whose roles train them to think about a number of factors surrounding any given issue. Their job is to set the big goals and marshal the efforts of different departments in their organization to achieve them. In some ways, the execs appeared to view search marketing as a “space race” against their competitors, an attitude formally reserved for traditional media such as television and print.

There is going to be a lot of pressure put on IT departments from firms that want to exploit the marketing potential of search with in-house talent. At the same time, it will be extremely important for those in-house SEO/SEM teams to learn to communicate their knowledge to their management. SEO and SEM are becoming far more important and management is starting to find outside sources of information.

This is a good thing for everyone involved in the SEO/SEM sector, both corporate in-house workers and independent SEO/SEM firms. Corporate decision makers are without a doubt, favorably reconsidering the importance of organic search engine placements. SEO consultancies, such as the one offered by StepForth, will be in much higher demand in order to help outline and analyze campaigns executed by in-house SEOs. Outsourcing of SEO and SEM projects is also likely to increase as the decision makers realize that the boundaries of the search marketing world are constantly shifting and expanding.

Search Engine Business World Vancouver was a mini-conference that became a conversation and looks like it could become a community. For me, it was more than a pleasure and a privilege speaking to a room of corporate executives; it was an invaluable learning experience. I hope it was for those who attended as well.

Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts, and Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/ Tel – 250-385-1190 Toll Free – 877-385-5526 Fax – 250-385-1198

WiredRed.com’s fully equipped e/pop Web Conferencing goes beyond traditional web conferencing and includes desktop sharing, remote control, and high-quality full-motion video. Among the many more impressive features are:

• Installable web conferencing solution, not a $/minute web conferencing service
• 5-Minute server installation
• 100% Browser-based client, no slide and presentation pre-processors, virtual machines or other hidden client installable
• Encrypt your Internet web conferencing sessions
• Install behind your firewall for an employee-only web conferencing solution
• Use your own conferencing URL
• Display your own logos

That isn’t even close to all of the software’s features. Go here to view a complete list.

You can get a 15-day free full-featured trial of e/pop Web Conferencing here. It can be run on either a WiredRed hosted server or your own network. System requirements can be viewed here.

Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

If you have been thinking about using this technology for your enterprise, it is important to first outline your needs and then match them with the various online conferencing systems that are being offered in the marketplace. Here are a few things to consider when you shop around for the system that is best for you:

1. Do you need to communicate with one static location or with a variety of possibly changing locations? Some conferencing systems are designed to connect two or more specific locations. If you have a head office and a fixed branch office that you want to communicate with, then a fixed connection system could work for you.

However, if you want to connect with a variety of locations or allow people anywhere to join your conferences or meetings then you should choose a system that allows you to add users no matter where they log in from.

2. Do you want a browser based system or can you work with proprietary software? A few of the original web and video conferencing applications had their own software and even specific hardware to install. Now it is possible to use conferencing systems that run on all browsers and all operating systems without the need for special hardware. Take a look at the various systems being offered and choose the one that would fit in with your organization’s technical capabilities.

3. Are some of your participants behind firewalls? These days many, if not most offices, and even individual computers connected to the Internet are protected by firewalls. The firewalls keep hackers out, but they may also pose a problem for some conferencing systems. Check to see if the conferencing system of your choice can deal with this problem.

4. How important is video to you? If you would like to see your colleagues and staff as they participate in your meetings, then you will need a system that allows some locations to hook up to the meeting with a web camera. Check to see how many individual video windows are allowed by the various applications that you consider, and choose the one that best meets your needs.

5. What features do you need? Do you want to poll attendees and get immediate results while you are online? Some systems allow the host to present a question and then all the participants can vote or give an answer with the click of their mouse.

Do you want to share applications online? If your conferencing system allows application sharing then it is possible for the host to present PowerPoint presentations, for example, that will be visible to all the attendees.

Make a list of the communications features that you need and match them to the capabilities of each system that you consider.

6. What is your budget? Of course you want the most features that are possible but you also have to weigh-in the costs. When you make your decision, keep in mind the benefits that you will get by communicating online, think about the cost of doing this offline and then look at the fees charged by the conference technology providers. Choose a communications package that will give you a good return on your investment.

Now, armed with this checklist, go online and do a search for web or video conferencing and pick out a system that will allow you to conduct your meetings online at a price that you can afford.

Dan Richmond is CEO and Co-founder of MegaMeeting.com. MegaMeeting provides web conferencing and video conferencing services for individuals, businesses and educational institutions. For more information, or for a free live demonstration, please visit http://www.MegaMeeting.com or call (818) 783-4311.

Some systems run on proprietary software and need special equipment, while browser based systems usually do not require the installation of special software or equipment. Many organizations and individuals will find browser based solutions easier to use. Here are a few reasons why this is so:

1. They work on all operating systems. Do you have some users on Mac and some on PCs? Do you have some users who have Linux? If you want to connect all of these people together in one conference it may be impossible if you have to install special software to run your conference. In this case a browser based system that can run on all operating systems and all browsers allows you to connect with all of your staff or clientele without any worries about what kind of computer they are operating.

2. You don’t have to download and install software. Sure, people are becoming more computer-literate as time goes on, but downloading and installing software and getting the software to run properly can be an obstacle to some people. The good news is that with many browser based systems there is no software to download, because the installation is done on the technology provider’s host computer. Participating in a conference is as easy as going on line to view a website.

3. People anywhere in the world can go online and join the conference. With no equipment installation and no software installation to take care of, the door is open to widespread participation in your conferences. The only thing that you have to do is to notify your people and provide them with a url and a password and they can join in.

4. There is no problem with firewalls. Most offices and many individuals protect their computers and networks from hackers by using a firewall. This is good for security but can become a problem if you are trying to join people together in a conference. Many web and browser based systems are not affected by firewalls and no special instructions have to be given to conference participants whose computers may be protected by firewalls.

All of these factors add up to one very strong advantage of using browser based conferencing systems: they allow you to get maximum participation in your online events. With little or no technical obstacles, such systems make it easy for large numbers of people, using diverse equipment and with varying degrees of computer skills, to take part in online meetings. So, take a look at the various conferencing packages on the market at the present time and pick out one that is both easy to use and powerful enough to meet your communications needs.

Dan Richmond is CEO and Co-founder of MegaMeeting.com. MegaMeeting provides web conferencing and video conferencing services for individuals, businesses and educational institutions. For more information, or for a free live demonstration, please visit http://www.MegaMeeting.com or call (818) 783-4311.

Similarly, today a few innovative companies have enthusiastically embraced web and video conferencing and are reporting great benefits from this under-used application.

Who is making use of web and video conferencing, and how are they using it? Here is a look at some of the enterprises and institutions that are being transformed by the intelligent use of this up-and-coming technology.

ver conscious of rising costs, schools and universities are using web/video conferencing to conduct administrative meetings with staff and also for setting up online courses and tutoring for students. Web and video conferencing “made all the difference in turning a scheduling conflict into a magical lifetime memory for our student,” says Jon Fredricks of Midland Lutheran College.

While clergy are not usually pictured as techno-geeks, churches and other religious institutions have been quick to see the advantages of video conferencing applications and now use it to enable shut-in members of their congregations “attend” worship services without leaving their homes.

Sales organizations are using video and/or web conferencing to conduct sales meetings as well as to meet and demonstrate their products with prospects. Taking this further, sales coaches and trainers have whole-heartedly embraced online conferencing as a way to develop new methods of training, and save money at the same time.

Video and web conferencing “enabled us to develop a powerful new consulting/training business model in which we blend live classroom training with a continuous program of interactive videoconference training events, accessible by participants from virtually any location” reports Tim McMahon of McMahon WorldWide Sales Performance.

“The ability to offer this kind of programming has become a significant source of competitive advantage for us in the sales training marketplace,” added McMahon.

As might be expected, software and Internet companies who are already tech-savvy, have been quick to make use of online conferencing. They are using these applications to demonstrate their products and services to clients, and to provide a new, previously undreamed of level of support.

“The technology allows us to access dentists’ workstations in two clicks. It’s like working without walls and dentists have really been blown away by the personal touch that’s possible with this technology,” reports Rich Hirschinger, of DDS.com, a supplier of software for dentists.

Similarly, avant-garde media companies are using the latest web/video conferencing applications to present videos and conduct business meetings bringing together their offices located many miles apart.

Large organizations with many branches such as securities companies and banks have also seen online conferencing as a way to hold staff meetings, meet with clients and conduct training sessions without having to pay high travel costs.

But it is not only large institutions that are using these applications, professionals such as psychiatrists, psychologists and insurance agents are using online video conferencing to have intimate, one-on-one meetings with their patients, clients and prospects.

These are just a few examples of how various companies and institutions are getting the benefits provided by web and video conferencing. This list is sure to grow in the years ahead.

Dan Richmond is CEO and Co-founder of MegaMeeting.com. MegaMeeting provides web conferencing and video conferencing services for individuals, businesses and educational institutions. For more information, or for a free live demonstration, please visit http://www.MegaMeeting.com or call (818) 783-4311.