Web conferencing is here to stay. There are so many options and choices. The internet has many websites devoted to video conferencing. And companies in the conferencing business have a variety of options for customers. Web conferencing facilitates conducting live meetings over the internet.
Choosing a web conferencing service is not easy. What you need to do is first read about web conferencing and determine your individual need. Then weigh the pros and cons of different offers. Experts recommend that you undertake a comparison shopping exercise. Compare the packages on offer from leaders in the field like WebEx, PlaceWare, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and more.
Learn about the standards set for web conferencing by XCON: Centralized Conferencing Working Group. And choose a web conference provider with care.
Tips:
• Experts recommend avoiding the “price/use” formula. Choose a flat rate for a specified number of users. The ideal choice is one that allows you to meet as often as you need over the internet without paying for time used.
• Make an informed choice and insist on VoIP. Only this allows real-time meetings with presentations and so on. Telephone based web conferences are cumbersome.
• Choose a service that has IM, file sharing, and secure storage. Think future requirements not just the present. Choose a web conferencing provider who keeps abreast with the latest innovations in technology.
• Determine the actual global reach of the web conferencing vendor. Check facts for yourself and never depend on hearsay or brochures. Does the vendor have localized operations in far away countries like India, Japan, China, and Korea and so on or is he just US based.
• Choose a web conferencing vendor who is established in the business and has great user-friendly documentations. A web conferencing vendor must have 24/7 world wide customer service as well as trouble shooting facilities.
Never sign a contract before a trial. Ask for a free trial and determine how user friendly and efficient the service is. Be sure to check the features offered: VoIP, file sharing, instant messaging, dedicated technical and customer support, online FAQs, blogs, and forum for sharing problems and finding out solutions. Experts and the Macromedia whitepaper recommend that a web conferencing solution should: fit your budget, be compatible with your office computer and internet systems, and the conferencing tools must be user friendly. An ideal web conferencing company will not just push their product but make honest efforts to determine your needs before suggesting solutions. The bottom line should be not just a sale but a long term commitment to sustained service.
Make a market survey, take recommendations and quotes from at least three providers. Check for yourself the references they give. Make a list of questions and seek answers to them. Do in depth background checks on the web conferencing online services before you sign any contracts. Before you sign or make payments ensure that the web conferencing service is truly suitable to your company’s needs.
Source : http://www.free-articles-zone.com/
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Save Money With Web Conference Calling
We live in a consumer based economy, and big businesses are on the rise. With all of the expansions in the business world, there is money to be made. But it takes money to make money. In order to have unimaginable success in your company, you need to bring in more money than you are spending. Fortunately, other companies are over flowing with new and innovative ways to save you money within your company.
One of the largest costs a company will incur is communication and travel expense. These are unavoidable during company expansion and even during routine business for most companies. But fortunately, these types of charges can be bypassed or minimalized by using a web conference calling service.
Web conference calling makes meetings more convenient and a lot less expensive. It offers an opportunity to talk to clients in a different state or country, and show them your slideshows and other business material while having a virtual meeting online. Web conference calling is a quick and easy way to bridge communication gaps between your sister companies or even long distance clients. Let’s not forget there is no better way to convey your confidence in yourself and your business than face to face. It is the long distance hand-shake of the future. For a small company to impress a larger client, what better way than with cutting edge technology that shows you are not only serious about your business, but on the leading edge of technology.
Where To Find It
Web conference calling can be set up completely online, at your convenience. Places like SBC, ATT, and Verizon offer conference calling to companies at competitive rates. . These types of services are offered for as low as a quarter a minute! It requires no travel, virtually no prep time, and can usually be set up in minutes and is ready to go in about an hour. Web conference calling is a useful alternative to flying all over the country to meet clients in airport conference rooms, or even a clever way to have meetings between colleagues while staying in the comfort of your own home. Ultimately, Web conference calling can save your company thousands of dollars by allowing you to virtually meet, and show slideshows, calendars, and other important information without ever having to leave your computer. This is an unparalleled commodity to any company.
Source : http://www.refresharticles.com/
One of the largest costs a company will incur is communication and travel expense. These are unavoidable during company expansion and even during routine business for most companies. But fortunately, these types of charges can be bypassed or minimalized by using a web conference calling service.
Web conference calling makes meetings more convenient and a lot less expensive. It offers an opportunity to talk to clients in a different state or country, and show them your slideshows and other business material while having a virtual meeting online. Web conference calling is a quick and easy way to bridge communication gaps between your sister companies or even long distance clients. Let’s not forget there is no better way to convey your confidence in yourself and your business than face to face. It is the long distance hand-shake of the future. For a small company to impress a larger client, what better way than with cutting edge technology that shows you are not only serious about your business, but on the leading edge of technology.
Where To Find It
Web conference calling can be set up completely online, at your convenience. Places like SBC, ATT, and Verizon offer conference calling to companies at competitive rates. . These types of services are offered for as low as a quarter a minute! It requires no travel, virtually no prep time, and can usually be set up in minutes and is ready to go in about an hour. Web conference calling is a useful alternative to flying all over the country to meet clients in airport conference rooms, or even a clever way to have meetings between colleagues while staying in the comfort of your own home. Ultimately, Web conference calling can save your company thousands of dollars by allowing you to virtually meet, and show slideshows, calendars, and other important information without ever having to leave your computer. This is an unparalleled commodity to any company.
Source : http://www.refresharticles.com/
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
What Makes a Good Audio Conference Call?
When making conference calls, it's important to make sure first of all that everyone is seeing eye to eye on the technology that's going to be used.Sometimes, more traditional investors and older corporate managers may have a problem with appreciating new technology, so when using high-tech conferencing software, you may find yourself using the audio conference call features most frequently.
Remember back when teleconferencing was still new and corporate entities were still adjusting to it? You may come across that sort of psychological resistance when trying out new Web conferencing software. At any rate, your job is to make sure your audio conference call proceeds without a hitch!
A good audio conference relies foremost on the integrity of your connection. Are you and the other members of the conference all using fast connections to hook up to the Internet? Fortunately, a lot of audio conferencing software can adjust to the speed of the linkup of each individual user, so that even if the connection is relatively slow, he or she can still avoid missing out on key parts of the exchange.
The integrity of the software itself is also important. Do you have reliable, flexible software that doesn't crash or conflict with certain business-central programs? Does your software operate across a variety of platforms, and are there any restrictions on usage? In certain cases, enterprise-level conferencing software is paid for via subscription, which means you can't use your software anymore once the license you have purchased has expired. You have to renew the license, or seek another provider.
Audio conferencing isn't exactly outdated, given today's advancements in messaging technology; it still has its distinct advantages. For one thing, it's lightweight, so that a large number of people can connect to the central server via their software, without putting a strain on either the server or their computers. For another, software made purely for audio conferencing is inexpensive!
In some cases, it can actually be free! Modern chat messengers such as AIM, MSN and Yahoo allow free VoIP calls via headsets, and all you and the other person need to have is the same version of the free downloadable software. This works especially well for small groups, or one-on-one discussions. However, there are some security concerns. Free audio chat clients are generally insecure and if any important information is to be transferred online, they might get lost or hijacked along the way. For high-profile conferencing needs, purchasing professionally made enterprise-level Web-based audio conference call software is still the best option.
Source : http://www.webpronews.com/
A Professional Conference Call sold to N.Y. company
Conference calling services firm AT Conference Inc. has bought privately held A Professional Conference Call of Duluth, Ga., for an undisclosed amount.
"The acquisition of A Professional Conference Call represents AT Conference's commitment to diversifying and expanding our service offering," said David Jannetti, founder and CEO of Southampton, N.Y.-based AT Conference. "A Professional Conference Call customers will inherit access to an expanded customer support group capable of handling larger operator-assisted conference calls. In return, AT Conference customers gain access to WebTalk, a web-based portal that enables customers to directly control their own conferences using a dashboard interface."
AT Conference said the deal will help it maintain its position as one of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. It expects its revenue to jump 250 percent in 2008 compared with 2006.
Source : http://www.bizjournals.com/
"The acquisition of A Professional Conference Call represents AT Conference's commitment to diversifying and expanding our service offering," said David Jannetti, founder and CEO of Southampton, N.Y.-based AT Conference. "A Professional Conference Call customers will inherit access to an expanded customer support group capable of handling larger operator-assisted conference calls. In return, AT Conference customers gain access to WebTalk, a web-based portal that enables customers to directly control their own conferences using a dashboard interface."
AT Conference said the deal will help it maintain its position as one of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. It expects its revenue to jump 250 percent in 2008 compared with 2006.
Source : http://www.bizjournals.com/
Friday, January 11, 2008
Secured Web Conferencing - The Cost Effective Way
In due course, web conferencing has proved its worth over traditional audio or video conferencing. In those situations, where the basic meeting format is that of back and forth information flows, web conferencing is just second to face to face meeting.
However, security has always been a major concern with web conferencing. Mere SSL or AES encryption protocol cannot guarantee you complete access security though they are well known as industry standards. Corporate houses cannot ignore this viable communication media and at the same time cannot entirely depend on it for this very reason.
There are so many other problems in traditional web conferencing. The attendees who needed to deal with 3D CAD design, flash graphic design, and other similar collaborations of image based applications, had to fight hard to make the meeting effective up to the minimum level.
Another big problem with traditional web conferencing had been that the attendees had to download and install meeting client software. That is not all. The attendees needed to download Java, flash installations and others to support the client software. The whole process was tedious, time consuming and expensive (in some cases you need to pay monthly usage charges for your meeting client software).
Even after ignoring all these problems, you can not be sure that your meeting is held in a 100% secured atmosphere.
What next?
Here comes "on premise web conferencing appliances", a secured and easy to use conferencing tool for corporate communication. Just install the appliance and you are ready to start the conference - round the clock.
With these appliances you do not need to pay any monthly fee or you do not need constant IT support. To add to this there is no way that a firewall, proxy server or anti virus can block it. And thus you get a hustle free and smooth conference.
This appliance is supported by all the platforms like Mac, UNIX, Linux or Windows. To add to this, you can attend the conference using your iPhone too - thus you can stay connected even while you are on the move.
The best thing about "on premise web conferencing appliances" is that you can use your firewall to protect access security of web conferencing attendees. Alongside, with some of these appliances, you get the facility to Remotely Access your computer.
To sum up, "on premise web conferencing appliance for web meeting" provides you a simple, easy to use, cost effective and secured conferencing tool for internal and external meetings.
Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?
However, security has always been a major concern with web conferencing. Mere SSL or AES encryption protocol cannot guarantee you complete access security though they are well known as industry standards. Corporate houses cannot ignore this viable communication media and at the same time cannot entirely depend on it for this very reason.
There are so many other problems in traditional web conferencing. The attendees who needed to deal with 3D CAD design, flash graphic design, and other similar collaborations of image based applications, had to fight hard to make the meeting effective up to the minimum level.
Another big problem with traditional web conferencing had been that the attendees had to download and install meeting client software. That is not all. The attendees needed to download Java, flash installations and others to support the client software. The whole process was tedious, time consuming and expensive (in some cases you need to pay monthly usage charges for your meeting client software).
Even after ignoring all these problems, you can not be sure that your meeting is held in a 100% secured atmosphere.
What next?
Here comes "on premise web conferencing appliances", a secured and easy to use conferencing tool for corporate communication. Just install the appliance and you are ready to start the conference - round the clock.
With these appliances you do not need to pay any monthly fee or you do not need constant IT support. To add to this there is no way that a firewall, proxy server or anti virus can block it. And thus you get a hustle free and smooth conference.
This appliance is supported by all the platforms like Mac, UNIX, Linux or Windows. To add to this, you can attend the conference using your iPhone too - thus you can stay connected even while you are on the move.
The best thing about "on premise web conferencing appliances" is that you can use your firewall to protect access security of web conferencing attendees. Alongside, with some of these appliances, you get the facility to Remotely Access your computer.
To sum up, "on premise web conferencing appliance for web meeting" provides you a simple, easy to use, cost effective and secured conferencing tool for internal and external meetings.
Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Conference calls: Cutting the cord
While most of us here on planet small business have been sweating fancy productivity tools such as remote e-mail and the broadband Internet, old-school conference calling has quietly undergone a revolution. New online conferencing tools are cheaper and more powerful than ever. And they can add real value to your business.
Conference calling was strictly a high-end option until the mid-1990s, when digital telephony made the mandatory human operator obsolete. Today the Internet has spawned a veritable tidal wave of new multi-user communications tools. Audio-, Web-, and video-conferencing has grown to a $3.5-billion-a-year global industry. So-called reservationless conferencing accounts for roughly 95 percent of that market, according to research by Vapps (vapps.com), a Hoboken, N.J., provider of IP-based conferencing solutions.
Traditional carriers offer reliable automated conferencing, but they face rising competition from cheaper Web-based services such as WebEx (webex.com) - which will soon be acquired by Cisco Systems (Charts, Fortune 500) - and GoToMeeting (gotomeeting.com).
Skype, the IP-based free and low-cost phone service, is offering a new Skype for Business product that builds conferencing into a full suite of communications tools. Voice-over-Internet Protocol companies such as Vonage (Charts) (vonage.com) offer multiline conferencing as part of their service. One company, Accutalk (accutalk.net), even kicks in American Airlines reward miles with its conferencing packages. (But wasn't the idea of conference calling to skip the trip in the first place?)
Do these free or low-cost conference-calling products really work? Some discount services, such as WebEx and GoTo Meeting, are easy to set up and use - assuming call participants are at least a little bit Web savvy. Others, such as Skype, demand a fairly high degree of technological literacy.
The best bet for the weekly conference call in advance of my radio show, Strange New World (snwradio.com), turned out to be Skype for Business. Once you get it set up, the calling is easy, and integration of Internet and traditional phones is smooth. That's not to say that getting there was easy. While setting up Skype, we shared a number of exchanges such as "No, the pink wire goes in the other small hole." And more than once we had to make toll calls on real phones to get our "free" Skype conference call to work.
"This is turning into a major pain in my #%$," said "Ninja" Bob Fitzgerald, "head engineer guy" (his real title) at Hothead Studios, the New York City facility that produces the program. We also had occasional sound-quality issues. But in the end, Skype works. And there's no beating the price: Calls among Skype users are free, and calls outside the Skype network cost fractions of a cent per minute.
Mogistic (mogistic.com), a six-person custom-software developer based in Allentown, Pa., uses WebEx, which has emerged as a leading supplier of online teleconference, videoconference and meeting services. Mogistic's main product, Teamtivity, is a collaborative project-management tool that companies can use to organize and track their assets on the Web. After surveying the online conferencing landscape, Mogistic chose WebEx because it integrated well with Teamtivity, which the company uses to manage its own operations.
Each session, which includes voice and graphics, costs $1 a minute with no per-person charges. Mogistic spent about $2,000 last year for roughly 2,000 minutes spread over about 30 conference calls. Managing director Lawrence Wolfe says that he saves about $7,000 in travel costs for each client he can serve by teleconference. "We have 30 clients," says Wolfe. "That's roughly $200,000 per year in savings" - about 20 percent of Mogistic's total sales. Concludes Wolfe: "We simply could not be in business without the service."
So how to find the right option for your business? Comparison-shop and bargain. "Bundle up all your usage, find out exactly what it is you use, and then you have the ammunition to go shopping," says Ira Weinstein of Wainhouse Research, a Boston-based teleconferencing advisory firm. "Then you can save yourself a ton of money."
Source : http://www.openforum.com/
Conference calling was strictly a high-end option until the mid-1990s, when digital telephony made the mandatory human operator obsolete. Today the Internet has spawned a veritable tidal wave of new multi-user communications tools. Audio-, Web-, and video-conferencing has grown to a $3.5-billion-a-year global industry. So-called reservationless conferencing accounts for roughly 95 percent of that market, according to research by Vapps (vapps.com), a Hoboken, N.J., provider of IP-based conferencing solutions.
Traditional carriers offer reliable automated conferencing, but they face rising competition from cheaper Web-based services such as WebEx (webex.com) - which will soon be acquired by Cisco Systems (Charts, Fortune 500) - and GoToMeeting (gotomeeting.com).
Skype, the IP-based free and low-cost phone service, is offering a new Skype for Business product that builds conferencing into a full suite of communications tools. Voice-over-Internet Protocol companies such as Vonage (Charts) (vonage.com) offer multiline conferencing as part of their service. One company, Accutalk (accutalk.net), even kicks in American Airlines reward miles with its conferencing packages. (But wasn't the idea of conference calling to skip the trip in the first place?)
Do these free or low-cost conference-calling products really work? Some discount services, such as WebEx and GoTo Meeting, are easy to set up and use - assuming call participants are at least a little bit Web savvy. Others, such as Skype, demand a fairly high degree of technological literacy.
The best bet for the weekly conference call in advance of my radio show, Strange New World (snwradio.com), turned out to be Skype for Business. Once you get it set up, the calling is easy, and integration of Internet and traditional phones is smooth. That's not to say that getting there was easy. While setting up Skype, we shared a number of exchanges such as "No, the pink wire goes in the other small hole." And more than once we had to make toll calls on real phones to get our "free" Skype conference call to work.
"This is turning into a major pain in my #%$," said "Ninja" Bob Fitzgerald, "head engineer guy" (his real title) at Hothead Studios, the New York City facility that produces the program. We also had occasional sound-quality issues. But in the end, Skype works. And there's no beating the price: Calls among Skype users are free, and calls outside the Skype network cost fractions of a cent per minute.
Mogistic (mogistic.com), a six-person custom-software developer based in Allentown, Pa., uses WebEx, which has emerged as a leading supplier of online teleconference, videoconference and meeting services. Mogistic's main product, Teamtivity, is a collaborative project-management tool that companies can use to organize and track their assets on the Web. After surveying the online conferencing landscape, Mogistic chose WebEx because it integrated well with Teamtivity, which the company uses to manage its own operations.
Each session, which includes voice and graphics, costs $1 a minute with no per-person charges. Mogistic spent about $2,000 last year for roughly 2,000 minutes spread over about 30 conference calls. Managing director Lawrence Wolfe says that he saves about $7,000 in travel costs for each client he can serve by teleconference. "We have 30 clients," says Wolfe. "That's roughly $200,000 per year in savings" - about 20 percent of Mogistic's total sales. Concludes Wolfe: "We simply could not be in business without the service."
So how to find the right option for your business? Comparison-shop and bargain. "Bundle up all your usage, find out exactly what it is you use, and then you have the ammunition to go shopping," says Ira Weinstein of Wainhouse Research, a Boston-based teleconferencing advisory firm. "Then you can save yourself a ton of money."
Source : http://www.openforum.com/
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