Asking the clients about their usage won’t ever get us a large enough response rate to get valid totals. So let’s do a little group estimation amongst ourselves. I have put together a short (but difficult!) online survey. I’m asking each of the web conferencing technology vendors to go through and give best guesses and estimates of usage averages and totals that they see with their clients.

Click here to participate.

I will consolidate the results and make them available to everybody. The last page of the survey lets you enter your email address for a private response and I’ll also post key figures online. Of course, results will be cumulative only, and your responses won’t be identified by your name or company.

It is fine for multiple people in the same company to fill out the survey. I ask you to identify what company you work for and what client geography you are making estimates for.

That way, we can get some local expertise from the giants like Microsoft and WebEx by people who might know one geography but not their worldwide total. And I can do some averaging and internal validation by comparing responses from different people in the same company.

I know that many vendors don’t or can’t track exact client usage figures. Don’t let that stop you. Answer the statistics that you have a good feel for and skip the others. Informed guesses are okay. We know this won’t give us exact stats that will stand up in court, but a large canvassing of the industry will give us all a better picture of what is going on than we have now.

I have broken the statistic questions into three groups. Structured events, collaborative meetings, and on-demand recordings.

Take the survey today. And feel free to forward this to your colleagues who might have information and insights as well.

PS: I’m cross-posting this on Webinar Wire to hit the largest audience of vendors possible. Between these two blogs, I think just about every web conferencing vendor should see the note.

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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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Cowen and Company’s Peter Goldmacher says that a big "data oriented vendor" such as IBM, Oracle, or SAP could decide to go after WebEx as a data platform instead of a communications platform. Others have bandied about the possibility of Google or Yahoo bidding for WebEx to offer unified desktop applications and communications as part of an expanded hosted services platform. Nobody really expects any of these companies to get into a bidding war with Cisco though. The industry consensus is that the deal is a feteaccompli.

Analyst and blogger reactions have been mostly positive about the acquisition for both companies. It is seen as giving Cisco an entree into the small and medium business (SMB) market to broaden their reach from hardware designed for use in large enterprise data centers. It also gives them a way to expand the use of internet-routed data and thus, the use of more of their routers. Surprisingly, I haven’t seen many articles talking about Cisco’s past tentative steps towards offering combined collaboration services.They gave a shot at introducing a package with integrated telephony and web conferencing called Cisco Unified MeetingPlace, which I briefly surveyed at the Collaborative Technologies Conference last June. That was based on an OEM arrangement with Macromedia Breeze and doesn’t seem to have had much traction. I think we can guess where that partnershipis about to go!

The best early coverage came from Network World and LinuxWorld, who got interviews with executives at Cisco and WebEx to get their initial statements about the synergies in the acquisition. LinuxWorld interviewed Gary Griffiths, president of WebEx products and operations. NetworkWorld interviewed Ned Hooper, president of corporate business development at Cisco.

Ephraim Schwartz also wrote a very good opinion piece in InfoWorld, detailing how the acquisition signals Cisco’s move into Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) as a core part of their future success. It’s worth reading. The other article I recommend on this subject is from Tim O’Reilly at the O’Reilly Radar blog. He calls the acquisition aWeb 2.0 platform play.

I have seen a few dissenting voices in the wilderness. David Utter wrote a piece titled "Cisco WebEx Buy Could Quickly Crater." He is skeptical about the worth of the technology because of potential new advances in video multicasting, but I think his underlying proposition is incorrect. WebEx’s strength and value is not to enable videoconferencing.It enables web-based collaboration from small interactive group meetings to large, formal webinars. They also have a growing application business in their WebOffice shared workspace offering and a platform mashup play with WebEx Connect. None of those are vulnerable to the videoconferencing competition that Utter writes about.

Tom Keating says in his TMC VoIP & Gadgets blog that Cisco overpaid because the hosted collaboration space is very crowded and because the deal puts them into competition with Microsoft. I’m not qualified to comment on the pricing of the deal, but I would say that WebEx is valuable because of these points!

And for the most blunt minority view on the subject, take a gander at Rafe Needleman’s Webware Rant. He says that WebEx’s main product is "creaky, cumbersome, and overpriced." He also says that it is in danger of being technically eclipsed by products from Web 2.0 start-ups such as Vyew, Yugma, and SlideShare. This viewpoint again shows a personal bias towards simple slide share or application sharemeetings in a person-to-person or small group context. That’s only one piece of the WebEx product stack (and is unlikely to be financially important for them going forward). But Needleman is a fun read.

That should give you some material to chew through that is more than a standard restatement of the acquisition press release. I’ll check in again soon with the view from the vendor community.

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News of the acquisition emerged shortly after markets opened on Wall Street. The $3.2 billion price will work out to around $57 per share for WebEx stock. WebEx closed at $46.20 the evening before the announcement and rose rapidly when the deal became public.

Just as Microsoft has increasingly focused attention on the SMB market, Cisco is engaging in the same behavior here. Cisco wants to find a growing market for its products, which dominate the networking field but may be slowing in sales among larger customers.

Several reports about the agreement mention the conferencing and document sharing possibilities WebEx offers. Another WebEx feature deserves mention and could be just as important to certain firms as the more highly publicized features.

WebEx allows the sharing of remote desktops across geographical differences. A system administrator on the East Coast could help a user on the West Coast with troubleshooting an issue.

The benefit of that should not be underestimated. With a widely dispersed staff of non-technical people like salespeople, those employees could be faced with having to send their hardware out for updating or repair, incurring express delivery charges to and from the user.

Such costs add up over time, and become magnified in the event of a lost or damaged machine. Being able to facilitate speedier service options and keeping staffers from suffering downtime should be a nice selling point for Cisco.

Many of AIM’s 80 million users fire up their instant messaging client of choice at work. That group is part of a broader one comprised of about 135 million business IM users today, and could grow to 477 million by 2009, according to Radicati Research.

Capturing that market will mean addressing specific business needs with features and functionality. AOL has released its AIM Pro beta client as a free download today.

Brian Curry, VP for AOL Premium and Subscription Services, spoke with us ahead of the AIM Pro release. During the chat, we touched on the topic of security in messaging, a sensitive topic to businesses for reasons ranging from trade secret protection to compliance with federal laws.

All of the conversations that can be initiated from AIM Pro, whether they are voice, video, or IM, will be encrypted between the AIM Pro clients. A virus scanner checks transferred files between clients.

If an AIM Pro wishes to use an email address as a screen name, that email will be validated before being enabled for use. Altogether, the security with the business functionality and lower cost of ownership would serve as points of difference between AIM Pro, and consumer and other internal IM packages.

Instant messaging sessions in AIM Pro work as expected. From AIM Pro, one can set up a chat session with a group of people. Separate sessions going on can be combined into one session as desired as well.

Through the client, AIM Pro users have access to one-click voice and video chats. Those voice calls can be as large as a ten-way call. Video is limited to one-to-one, but Curry anticipates this will increase to four-way video in the future.

Integration has been a key to the development of the AIM Pro client, an undertaking WebEx completed with the use of the existing AIM SDK and APIs to do so. Sharing a desktop may be initiated from a tab in the message window, as an example of WebEx integration into AIM Pro.

Outlook integration offers a connection with the user’s calendar; in AIM Pro, there are two tabs in the Buddy List, one for Contacts, the other for Calendar. That will work with Outlook 2000 SP4 and up, or Outlook Express.

In our test install, AIM Pro did display an upcoming meeting at the top of the screen, where an appointment window has replaced the advertising window in AIM Triton.

Directory lookups can be performed from the AIM Pro client as well. Along with searching the AOL Buddy List, the client connects to the Outlook address book, or a global address list, to find those listings.

Interoperability also has its place in AIM Pro, as it has federation with services like Microsoft’s Live Communication Server, Google Talk, IBM Sametime, and others. Curry demonstrated how he could easily connect to someone on Microsoft’s network from AIM Pro without difficulty.

Another way they have reduced the potential headaches with AIM Pro installations came from WebEx. Voice and video conferencing done through the client uses the WebEx Global MediaTone Network.

That allows the traffic to traverse corporate networks and firewalls without the need for extra configuration by system administrators to those areas so AIM Pro can communicate.

Part of the design architected for the client will allow for content modules to be added to AIM Pro. These will go at the bottom of the Buddy List window.

A Finance module will deliver headlines from the Wall Street Journal, and users can mouseover headlines to see a snippet of a story’s content. Stock quotes and access to AOL Finance are also available through the module.

AOL has a deal with PodShow in place for the second module, AIM Pro Podcasting. This will allow playback of podcasts from the module instead of using a separate player or browser window.

The third module, People Search, connects with ZoomInfo to find more information from that resource. Curry said AOL plans to make the API available to other partners who want to create content modules as well.

Business owners should be happier with the look and feel of AIM Pro, along with the new functionality. Replacing the ad window with appointments and integrating the client with Outlook probably represents the most important part of the shift from a consumer to business-focused approach to this client’s software.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Open AIM At Your Social Network

The Open AIM initiative launched in March as a branding tool for AOL that allows companies, communities and independent developers to build customized plugins, communications clients and mash-ups that access AOL’s IM network.

The AOL team says the latest installment is especially geared toward social networks, online gaming, and music. It enables webmasters to set up social environments like Doppleganger’s recently launched The Lounge featuring the Pussycat Dolls, a virtual night club, or like WebEx Communication’s online video conferencing.

The AIM Bots work as artificial buddies that quickly retrieve information via IM. For example, the Wall Street Journal Online has a bot that allows users to type in a ticker symbol as a command for the bot to bring back stock information.

The AOL team said the same functionality can be used to create weather alerts, retrieve movie information, et cetera. The bots have also been integrated into SMS for mobile text messaging. AIM Bot sample code has been added to the updated Open AIM SDK and scripting programs are available to help developers get started.

In addition, AIM Bots can support audio calls, file transfers and picture sharing. For example, an AIM Bot could be created to let users send pictures or podcasts to their blogs. They respond automatically to IMs they receive and can maintain IM conversations with multiple users To prevent IM spam, AIM Bots cannot initiate IMs without permission.

There is a limit of 10,000 IMs per day, and 100,000 per month. But Alan Keister, Senior Director of Engineering, Instant Messaging and Social Networking Products, says that the limit can be increased through an arrangement with AOL.

The update also includes support for locations services, like the ability to take your physical location and send it to your buddies so they know where to find you. “You can find out when your buddies are near you or when your buddies are at a favorite hangout,” said AIM Chief Architect Justin Uberti.

Uberti told WebProNews that the AIM team is working on a way to set location from mobile devices in the future. He also gave security assurances that only people on your buddy list can see the location and that the information stored on AOL’s servers does not link locations with users.

“We’re very concerned about privacy,” said Keister. We’re protecting the member data and privacy information very strictly. There is an ability to save favorite locations on our server if the user wishes, but there is no time stamp on that.”

AIM Location services are part of the Open AIM Software Development Kit (SDK). The new application program interfaces (APIs) – with sample code in both C++ and Java – have been added to the SDK to let developers build location services into clients, plugins and, in the coming weeks, Web sites.

The APIs are available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and Pocket PC. They support several languages, including C++, C#, Visual Basic in Java. It also includes video and audio applications. Previously there was an API for that, but AOL didn’t enclose the media components, said Uberti.

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The growing popularity of instant messaging has spread to businesses, where many require certain levels of security and functionality that are not always available in freely distributed IM services.

An agreement between AIM provider AOL and WebEx will focus on delivering an AIM Pro service, several sources including Red Herring reported. For existing AIM users who choose to upgrade to one of two subscription-based versions of AIM Pro, their existing screen names will be supported and the ads removed from the software.

Pricing has not been disclosed yet for AIM Pro. The service should become available in the second quarter of this year. Customer can select a professional edition, aimed at individuals or small-to-medium businesses, or an enterprise edition that is targeted for bigger organizations.

Along with text chat, users will have access to audio and video chat functions. Web collaboration features familiar to WebEx users will be available in AIM Pro.

Instant messaging has made inroads into a lot of businesses via the free chat clients from AIM, along with competing options from Yahoo, MSN, and now Google. By offering a more secure service, with a customizable interface, the partnership could convince some of those free AIM users that the features available from WebEx via AIM Pro deliver greater value for business use.

There are a lot of users in the business world to attract. One report from IDC claimed the millions of business IM users send a billion IMs each day. The market for spending on IM by businesses could top $736 million worldwide in three years.

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PC Now from WebEx lets you do this at an affordable cost, from anywhere in the world. Even CNET called the product “powerful, secure, remote desktop for less cost than most competing services”.

PC Now makes it simple to access any of your files from anywhere. As WebEx itself says, the best way to find out how easy WebEx PC Now works, is to try it yourself. They are offering a free 30 day trial.

The company also offers an online meeting product, which allows the user to conduct unlimited web meetings with free phone conferencing.

The product is called MeetMeNow, and allows you to share any application running on your PC or even your entire desktop, in real-time with anyone around the globe. It also features integration with Outlook, Yahoo, and AIM. WexEx offers a 14 day free trial of this service.

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