Web conferencing software (26-Oct-08)

Web conferencing

Web conferencing is a way to join in the meeting from web (internet or intranet). Using web conferencing you can share documents, presentations etc.  Now web conferencing is rapidly becoming a way to organize the meeting in corporate. This is definitely increasing the efficiency of employees in order to share the data, while they are located at different locations. This also gives you ability to have audio and video communication during the meeting (depending on application and edition).

Followings are the software used to provide the web conferencing feature.

• Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
• Microsoft Office Live Meeting (Hosted solution)
• Adobe Acrobat Connect
• Convenos Meeting Center
• Genesys Meeting Center
• GoToMeeting
• IBM Lotus Sametime
• InterCall
• WebEx

 

Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional:  This application is entirely Adobe Flash based. Following features are offered by Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional.

• Unlimited and customizable meeting rooms
• Multiple meeting rooms per user
• Breakout sessions within a meeting
• VoIP
• Audio integration
• Video conferencing
• Meeting recording
• Screen sharing
• Notes, chat and whiteboarding
• User management, administration and reporting
• Polling
• Central content library
• Collaboration Builder SDK

Convenos Meeting Center:  It aims the small and medium sized enterprises. One of the important things in this application is the integration with Skype.

Genesys Meeting Center:  This application is a collaboration service, combining PSTN, VoIP and streaming media voice access with video and web conferencing. Moderators of the meeting can deliver presentations, share documents or applications in real time or they can record their meetings for playback later.

GoTo Meeting by Citrix:  Features of GoTo Meeting.  

IBM Lotus sametime:  IBM® Lotus® Sametime® software's Web conferencing capabilities let you share and collaborate on desktop, presentations, documents and applications with colleagues, customers and business partners in real time.

InterCall Web Conferencing: InterCall offers a variety of flexible web conferencing solutions for collaborative meeting experiences. InterCall offers InterCall Web Meeting, a truly integrated 1 click meeting start with Outlook integration. And it offers MShow for enhanced web connections including rich media and video integration. These products and services allow users to host collaborative virtual meetings, deliver powerful presentations and demonstrate software.

WebEx by Cisco:  About WebEx.

Comparison of Web conferencing software features on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_conferencing_software

Microsoft hosted Live Meeting and Office Communications Server:

Feature	Live Meeting Standard	Live Meeting Professional	Office Communications Server 2007
Connected Organizations
Host collaborative meetings quickly and cost-effectively
Streamlined user experience	X	X	X
Support for Web client	X	X
Single meeting client for on-premise and hosted conferencing	X	X	X
Interactive whiteboard and annotation tools	X	X	X
Shared notes pane	X	X	X
Train distributed employees and partners and conduct events that scale to support large audiences
Conferencing add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook	X	X	X
Event and class registration		X
Public events page		X
Advanced testing and grading		X
High fidelity recordings	X	X	X
Shared recordings		X
Personal recordings	X	X	X
Microsoft event services	X	X
Meeting reports	X	X
Meeting content storage and management tools	X	X
Easy Assist remote assistance capability		X

Disclaimer: The list of Web conferencing software doesn't end here. There are other software too which provide web conferencing solution. This article is not meant to promote or demote any application against others. This is intended to provide an overview of web conferencing software. We’d strongly recommend anyone to contact the reseller of the corresponding product to have detailed information about it. If you have any reservation or feedback about the information provided in this article, please send an email to uc@ocspedia.com.