Web Conferencing Solution

One of the biggest corporate banes that small businesses are experiencing today in terms of costs is offsite meetings. This is why web conferencing solutions have become more and more popular these days. Web conferencing solution presents a full-featured, packaged solution for small businesses looking to save money. By reducing the number of offsite meetings, web conferencing solution looks all set to increase productivity levels without increasing costs.

Web conferencing solution is especially helpful if your business is one that requires frequent one-on-one meetings, say for brainstorming sessions, for instance. And if you lack a sufficient travel budget to conduct one of these brainstorming sessions, then you’re one likely candidate for a web conferencing solution. When you think about it, it is far wiser to cancel those expensive plane and hotel reservations and invest instead in one of these online web conferencing solutions.

This article strives to examine five of the latest, most widely used web conferencing solutions, including Microsoft’s new Live Meeting Service. Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates states that his company will save nearly $40 million in travel expenses this year using Live Meeting. But, web conferencing solution works not only for giant corporations, like Microsoft, but small businesses as well.

What Sets Each Web Conferencing Solution Apart

The first major distinction in the plethora of web conferencing solutions you can find today is price, of course. The most affordable so far is Citrix’s GoToMeeting. This web conferencing solution is basically a bare-bones presentation services. It uses conventional teleconferencing centers which house the audio portions. To make presentations, the main mode of application used is PowerPoint. Citrix’s web conferencing solution also allows shared desktop presentation besides the PowerPoint presentation and this can be achieved via desktop PCs.

Another web conferencing solution is Convoq ASAP Pro 2.0. This web conferencing solution takes web conferencing a step further by adding one-to-one video and Voice over IP (VoIP). This particularly nifty feature allows participants to both see and hear content over their desktop PCs. A free version of this web conferencing solution is available but it limited to only two users.

The three trendsetters in web conferencing solutions, Macromedia, Microsoft, and WebEx, offers their own packages which definitely have the lion’s share when it comes to bells and whistles. Macromedia Breeze, Microsoft Live Meeting, and WebEx all offer web conferencing packages that include a whiteboard presentation space, IM chat, multiple-party video, quick polling, and the ability to record a meeting for later playback. The playback feature is particularly useful for sales presentations or tutorials.