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.

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.

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.

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.

The system is designed to be set up in a conference room, and while the setup is similar to popular and much more expensive telepresence solutions, Tandberg considers this high definition, high quality video conferencing. Unlike other telepresence solutions offered by Tandberg, the system has a limit to the number and size of the screens that are used. The new C60 codec is a slimmed down version of the C90 codec used in telepresence solutions. The package also doesn’t include matching furniture to closer simulate that the remote people you are working with are sitting in the same room.

The Profile system with a single screen costs $38,900, compared with the company’s lowest-end telepresence solution starting at $69,900. The Tandberg profile is being targeted at medium sized businesses that require high quality video conferencing, but don’t have the need or infrastructure to support full telepresence systems. The Profile will be competing against other similar products recently introduced by rival video conferencing firms LifeSize and Polycom.

Channel Manager, Sunny Au:

We are in an interesting position. While the global marketplace is experiencing more ebbs than flows, ACT is  consistently seeing growth around the globe. This is because at a time when travel budgets are slashed and people  are expected to do more with fewer resources, on-demand conferencing solutions are a must-have.

ReadySpace Executive Director, David Loke:

ACT Conferencing has provided a fantastic reseller package that enables us to further leverage our managed services  portfolio. This partnership allows us to more effectively tackle the SMB space that is  a growth area for conferencing services across South East Asia. We are looking forward to generating more business  opportunities with ACT’s extensive support.

ACT conferencing is not only expanding its services to the Asia Pacific region, but it is also becoming involved in  local organizations such as the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. ACT also participates in IT and  telecommunication committees in the region which focus on conducting business in the region. The firm is also  involved with and sponsored by many local news organizations.

1. The first is the most obvious: if you start web conferencing, you’ll cut down on travel and cut back on travel expenses. Even though fuel prices are starting to come down from the all-time highs they were seeing a few months ago, virtual meetings will always be a much more cost-effective solution.

2. Extend the reach of your business. Web conferencing can allow you to touch many more customers and find new business in areas that you had not previously considered.

3. Increase the productivity of your company by using web conferencing or video conferencing services to supplement internal types of communication such as interviews with potential employees.

4. Encourage brainstorming within your company. White boarding and other collaborative features of web conferencing services allow teams to quickly work together and bring new ideas out quickly and efficiently.

5. Enhance customer satisfaction. With sales in many industries taking a hit right now, customer satisfaction is more important than ever. With less people looking to buy your product, competition has never been more fierce. Web conferencing can allow you to provide more comprehensive and complete customer service.

Crossover VP, Darin Gibbons:

Web conferencing is being embraced by businesses of all sizes. Not only does it save time and the expense of business travel, it also fosters collaboration and interactive sharing for remote employees, customers and suppliers alike.

RHUB CEO, Larrie Dorie:

We are very excited to have Crossover join our channel team Crossover’s experience, size and market focus make them an ideal partner for RHUB. Their excellent support capabilities will provide the assistance resellers can rely on.

The Turbomeeting web conferencing software provides for both fully interactive and presentation only type conferencing. In a fully interactive web conference, users can communicate with the presenter, share files, speak and show video to one or multiple users. In presentation only mode, the system is more like a typical video conference where the presenter controls the entire system while audience members view the presentation. The system is compatible with both PC and Mac systems.

Out of those, the audio one is lower growth, but the Web and video have some pretty healthy growth

While small businesses have been using audio conferencing for quite some time, many are slowly switching to include video conferencing and online collaboration through web conferencing services. This technology is still fairly new to many of these smaller sized companies, but in light of increased travel expenses are becoming more attractive.

One of the most important drivers for the adoption of videoconferencing and Web conferencing by SMBs is the increase in performance of networks, which makes it possible to run the applications reliably and without losing video quality. In the last few years prices for high speed networks have come down dramatically. Videoconferencing and Web conferencing solutions have also come down in price enough that they’re affordable by SMBs.

The study also indicated that small businesses up to 99 employees showed a prefernce for using hosted solutions, such as InstantPresenter, while medium businesses (100-999 employees) seemd to show a prefernce for both hosted and on premise conferencing solutions.

Key features of the Virtual Classroom Pack include:

Support for up to 40 students per virtual classroom

Customization for teachers, including landing pages, logos, and other images

Integrated support for video chat

Built-in VoIP service, plus 10 free audio conferencing accounts.
Dimdim CEO, DD Ganguly:

Dimdim was launched with the goal to bring the world together, across all disciplines, whether in a business environment or on an academic campus. We feel it is our responsibility to provide easy to use, low cost collaboration tools like Dimdim Virtual Classroom Pack for schools and educational causes worldwide, and we are thrilled that several academic leaders have already embraced Dimdim to interact and share knowledge and ideas.