Web Conferencing Provider

If there’s one thing that web conferencing providers tout, it would be fixing that dreaded corporate institution – the business meeting. For years, the promise of web conferencing providers have been to slash travel costs, make employees more productive, and keep work sessions focused on the task at hand. The goal is to streamline corporate meetings as much as possible in order to increase productivity levels in the workplace without increasing the cost.

So if web conferencing providers can offer these, why aren’t more people using the service?

Despite the fact that software tools that web conferencing providers offer are spreading, companies still aren’t taking full advantage of them. Analysts say that the potential benefits which web conferencing providers make possible remain largely untapped. The belief is that web conferencing provider tools are seen as too complicated, too expensive, and too unreliable and this is why not more people are using them.

According to IDC Inc., a Framingham, Mass., technology Research Company, three quarters of surveyed companies that have adopted online conferencing from web conferencing providers still don’t make it available to all employees. And if the tools are indeed available, they often remain unused because employees find them too complicated to make much of.

Robert Mahowald, an IDC research manager, says that “the barriers to the technology have been too high in the past.”

But thanks to improvements that leading web conferencing providers are making in their tools, all this is beginning to change. This year, web conferencing providers are projecting an increase to 107 million users of web conference systems. This is far cry from 2003’s 79 million and the 51 million of 2002, as reported by IDC.

In an effort to make the system easier and simpler for its users, web conferencing providers and vendors have made drastic changes in their overall thrust. Instead of creating a specific system for conferencing purposes, web conferencing providers are integrating their systems with common desktop tools. Such tools include email and instant messaging. Thus you find WebEx, Microsoft and other leading web conferencing providers installing a meeting icon in a customers Microsoft Outlook email program. With just a click of the button, you can organize and schedule a meeting and send all attendees an email containing a calendar listing and a link to the meeting website. To join, attendees only have to click on the link and separately dial in to the voice conference call.

With conferencing tools simplified this way, web conferencing providers have finally found a way to make web conference catch on, giving companies the opportunity to take advantage of all its fringe benefits.