Web Conferencing Resources

Web Conferencing up to 2500 People using VIA3

In the world of web conferencing, most meetings are held in small groups of 2-10 attendees. Recent research by the Web Conferencing Council showed that the average meeting size is an astounding 3.4 users per session, when factoring in all sizes and categories of meetings.

It is a rare case to have an entire company meeting held using web conferencing, mostly because of the fact that most web conferencing vendors do not adequately scale. Some vendors cap the amount of attendees at 20, 100, or 200. Occasionally you will find one that allows up to 1000 users. Last week the Web Conferencing Council turned some heads, when they successfully completed a 2,500 account test using VIA3, simulating a company meeting held on a fast corporate internet. Due to the unique bandwidth management, and the ability to invite VIA3 audience members only, it was able to continually scale as far as the bandwidth and numbers would allow.

The audience mode for VIA3 lets people view the meeting, complete with rich audio (VOIP), rich video, presentations, whiteboards, voting, group chat, and more. Because they are not projecting their own audio or video, their impact to the overall bandwidth is minimal. Audience members can interact with the speaker(s) by utilizing group chat, where they can comment or quiz using text input.

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TaTa Communications to Launch Hyper Office

Starting next month, Tata Communications is going to offer a private-labeled version of HyperOffice’s online collaboration suite with the high-speed data and voice tools that it sells in India and worldwide. Tata offers Internet services in India under the Tata Indicom brand to business subscribers, including online backup, security, web conferencing, business e-mail, hosting, high-speed broadband, dial-up Internet, net telephony and Wi-Fi.

India is the third-largest telecoms market in the world and the second-largest wireless market. India’s Economic Survey for 2008-2009 counted 414 million fixed and mobile connections as of February – on target to reach 500 million by 2010. Broadband subscribers increased to 5.69 million in February, up from 180,000 in March 2005.

Informa, the research firm, forecasts mobile broadband revenues will reach $3.9 billion in India in 2013. HyperOffice president Farzin Arsanjani believes Tata Communications is just the ticket for putting cloud computing tools into the hands of business users in emerging markets. The company’s international expansion started last year when it delivered a Spanish edition of HyperOffice as well as smartphone and iPhone support.

HyperOffice operates as an integrated Microsoft Exchange alternative as well as a SharePoint alternative with all the functionality but developed and priced for small to mid-sized companies. Its solutions include document management, calendar, contact management, task manager, discussion forums, opinion polls and announcements. It’s browser-agnostic.

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Reduce Travel with Web Conferencing

In a trend that could transform the way companies do business, Cisco Systems has slashed its annual travel budget by two-thirds – from $750 million to $240 million – by using similar web conferencing technology to replace air travel and hotel bills for its vast workforce. Likewise, Hewlett-Packard says it sliced 30 percent of its travel expenses from 2007 to 2008 – and expects even better results for 2009 – in large part because of its video conference technology.

Both Cisco and HP have dual motives for grounding employees. They want not only to cut expenses in tough economic times but also to promote their own brands of pricey conferencing systems. But the success of the two global tech giants in keeping workers away from airports en masse is sure to catch the eyes of CEOs around the world.

Cisco says more than 300 corporate customers already have deployed its TelePresence conferencing system. HP, whose conferencing clients include AMD in Sunnyvale, Calif., and Nokia, would not disclose how many clients it has for its system, called Halo. Cisco and HP, in addition to competing with each other, also battle smaller video conferencing companies – such as Tandberg, Teliris and Polycom – for market share in the rapidly growing niche.

Until recently, video conferencing was not something executives could depend on. Corporate networks, for example, lacked the bandwidth to handle video. Connecting farflung participants required endless fiddling from the company’s IT department. Audio and video were often out of sync – so the movement of participants’ lips didn’t match their words. Then there were the constant freeze-frames and dropped connections – which often resulted in frustrated participants boarding planes for face-to-face meetings.

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Saving Money and Increasing Productivity with Web conferencing

Cost savings of webconferencing services have now been realized my thousands of companies that have implemented the technology. Travel is becoming increasingly expensive and with the advancements in video conferencing technology, online meetings can seem almost as real as being in person. When replacing travel that requires flights and overnight stays, online meetings can shave up to 94 percent off the cost of an average meeting.

Productivity however is where web conferencing becomes an asset to a company. Money aside, web conferencing saves a great deal of time and effort in meeting and collaborating with clients, partners, suppliers, distributors, etc. People all over the world can instantly be connected with one another. This not only saves time wasted with employees in travel, but also presents them from being weary when they reach their destination. In an independent study on www.webconferencing-test.com, researchers claim that web conferencing increases productivity by reducing the lead time to descion making. In many cases of conventional meetings, certain entities fail to show up, or meetings turn out to be a stale-mate and a waste of time. With no return on the time invested on a useless meeting, the productivity and financial costs can be huge. However, in a web conference, this type of meeting can quickly end and cost the company almost nothing.

Finally another huge push in the web conferencing industry has been an initiative by many responsible companies to “go-green” and reduce their carbon footprint. Sending employees traveling by car and air can create a great deal of carbon pollution, while web conferencing, like all digital communication is very clean in comparison.

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Dimdim Webconferencing, Thriving in an Uncertain Economy

Dimdim, the low-priced webconferencing service has made some big strides and gained competitive ground in a market filled with deep-pocket competition like Cisco and WebEx in the one and a half years. The MA-based startup seems to be thriving in not only a market that has lots of competition, but in an economy that has many startups struggling to stay alive.

Dimdim has all of the basic features required for successful webconferencing, including document sharing, screensharing, whiteboards, and voice and video chat. The system is entirely web-based, and does not require any downloads, allowing people to quickly connect and collaborate on any computer with a browser and internet connection.

The company now claims to have over 2 million active users and hosts about 1 million minutes of web conferencing services each week. Their platform is entirely open source and large organizations like Drupal and Moodle are designing projects on their platform. Other companies are using components of the Dimdim system, such as the chat and document sharing modules.

This week, Dimdim is set to release version 5.0 of its services that will supposedly include a host of new, as-of-yet unannounced features.

www.dimdim.com

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Online Collaboration Tool Brings Freelancers Together

These days, a lot of people are going out on their own, working for themselves and doing freelance projects. The problem many freelancers are finding though is that most larger projects require a full team of developers and analysts, making it difficult to find other freelancers to pull together a team.

A new collaboration network has been setup for such freelancers to productivily put together teams and increase their opportunites for contracts in the UK. freelanceadvisor.co.uk allows freelancers to search for people with similar skillsets and create a virtual team online, greatly increasing the scope of projects that they can bid on.

Freelanceadvisor.co.uk Advisor, Darren Fell:

We have created an online collaborative network that allows individual contractors and freelancers to build a virtual team online. Its tough enough out there for freelancers and contractors and there is no need, with the technology tools we have available now, for communication to be a barrier

The site provides tools for the team to stay in touch as if they shared an physical office, ensuring that the entire team knows where they are on the project and enabling everyone to stay on the same page. While the “Network” as it’s more commonly known by won’t fit every style of contractor, for many it has become a way to broaden its offerings in contract bids.

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ReadyShow Web Conferencing

Today, many small, medium and even big businesses are switching or at least considering web and video conferencing services to cut travel and other expenses during this economic crisis. Video conferencing saves not only money, but can greatly increase productivity among remote teams and sales forces along with being a “green” solution for collaboration.

ReadyShow Web conferencing is a unified conferencing solution by The Conference Group which provides audio, video and web conferencing services. The service allows groups to collaborate anywhere in the world as if they were in the same room, all while reducing operation costs. ReadyShow can be tailored to suit the design and features required by each business.

ReadyShow is a stand alone application that also includes a web-based application so that it can be used cross-platform and without requiring a download. The service can then be accessed from any computer, anywhere in the world as long as it has a reliable internet connection.

Features of the service include online PowerPoint, Excel and Word documents, and the ability to share applications and documents via screensharing in real time. A feature (which sounds more like a gimmick than anything) is that audience members can actually raise their hand to ask a question or vote on an issue. So if a poll is taken, the cameras recognize who has raised their hands and instantly tallies the result, making the meeting seem more realistic than other online polls that require you to check a box. While I haven’t tried this feature, I’d have to think that the quality and accuracy of the system and camera recognizing a raised hand opposed to someone scratching their head might make this feature a bit annoying. Whether valuable or not though, it’s nice to see this company thinking outside the box.

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Portable High Definition Video Conferencing with Movi

Last week, video conferencing company tandberg annonced a mobile client for its high end video conferencing system, Movi. Movi will allow the company’s services to be run on portable devices like laptops and netbooks.

Tandberg CEO, Fredrik Halvorsen:

With Movi, there are no boundaries to where business can take place. Everyone in an organization can stay visually connected at all times

Movi licenses are expected to be as low as $93 per registration, based on 2000 users. On the server side, the software is a free update for TCS and VCS customers who havea a maintenance contract with their service.

Movi has the full support of the company’s video conferencing infrastructure such as firewall traversal, recording and archiving video and the ability to connect with legacy systems such as ISDN services. Eventually Movi will support 720p/30fps video. Tandberg is also set to release an HD web camera that supports that resolution.

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Online Video Calling with ooVoo

ooVoo has been out for a few months now and is continuing to expand features in its services. The service provides free video calling service, allowing everyone to see and hear each other, as if they were all in a physical meeting.

ooVoo lets you not only video conference, but also record video messages, create video chat rooms, and share files between meeting participants. the navigation system is straight forward and stylish.

The video quality is impressive and the audio is pretty clear, although I’ve noticed a lot of echoing in my trial uses with the product. Both video and audio quality (and the echoing problem) are going to be dependent on each user’s individual setup. If one user has a low quality camera, their video quality will be lower, and if one user has his microphone too close to his speakers, there’s going to be an echo.

The free version of the service is monetized by annoying ads at the bottom of the video conferencing window. Ads also appear in chat windows, and in most windows that are used in the system. While annoying, remember that the service is free. If you love the service, but hate the ads, ooVoo does ofer a pay service for $10 a month that includes 1000 minutes of video storage, up to 6 people in a video conference, and most importantly, no ads.

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Nestle Foods Selects InstantPresenter for Multi-Branch Webconference

Nestle USA, the world’s largest food company selected InstantPresenter, the leading provider of Flash-based video and web conferencing services to conduct a multi-branch web conference earlier this month. The local event was hosted in Glendale, CA and connected hundreds of the company’s employees. Nestle, like many companies are switching away from conventional conferences that require employee travel, to online meetings that save time, money and the environment.

InstantPresenter was given only a one week lead time on the project and was able to put it together without a hitch. InstantPresenter provides onsite conferencing at any location that has a reliable high-speed network. The company also works with production studios in Orange and LA counties to provide high quality productions.

InstantPresenter’s web-based conferencing platform requires no downloads and is compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems. InstantPresenter features include: video conferencing, screen sharing, online PowerPoint slides, VOIP, registration forms, survey tools, Paypal integration and much more.

For more information, or to sign up for a free trial, visit: http://www.instantpresenter.com

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