Have Web, Don't Travel

User-friendly Web-conferencing services deliver many benefits of in-person meetings, without hassle and expense.

Brad Grimes

Why pay for airline tickets, wait in long lines, and spend hours traveling when current Web services let you work with colleagues in real time without leaving your office?

Web-meeting services first appeared a couple of years ago, but now they're easier to use and offer more online-collaboration features. Companies such as Centra Software, Genesys Conferencing, PlaceWare, and WebEx (the latter won our 2001 World Class Award for Best Group Application)--all offer tools that allow you to conduct both small meetings and large conferences from several sites.

Off-Road Features

Without leaving their desks, participants can converse, chat online, share applications, annotate documents, and in some cases see each other through Web-based video cameras.

These services are very good at what they do. Although they don't offer the benefits of real-time videoconferencing (see "Videoconferencing: If Face Time Counts," below), they handle just about everything else. In fact, Web-meeting services generally offer better collaboration tools than videoconferencing systems can.

You can use Web-meeting services to deliver slide-show presentations in real time, broadcast company information, conduct question-and-answer sessions, mark up documents with several colleagues, and even take control of a remote PC, whether to demonstrate a software program or to troubleshoot a system problem. In addition, they're incredibly easy to use: All you need is a Web browser, an Internet connection, and your computer's standard mouse and keyboard.

The services can be an excellent choice for companies that want to safely and cheaply pull together people who need to interact, collaborate, or learn.

How to Choose

Typically, online tools address two main types of collaboration: small meetings of a few individuals, and large conferences with a presenter or a moderator (or a teacher, in the case of an online classroom). Most major companies offer the same basic collaboration tools, but you should look for some key features.

If your company uses several computing platforms, look for a service that works with all of them. WebEx Meeting Center, for instance, supports Mac and Unix systems as well as Windows PCs; Centra EMeeting supports only Windows (see the chart "Web Conferencing: What You Get, What You Don't"). And all the services work best over high-speed Internet hookups, but some participants may be on a standard modem connection. Some services say you can get by on a 28.8-kbps modem, but you really need at least a 56-kbps connection to enjoy true collaboration, including application sharing and online presentations.

Since no Web-based tool can replace voice communication completely, you'll want a service with integrated teleconferencing--the ability to set up a phone call with multiple participants. Someday, voice-over-IP technology may save you money by letting you use your PC as a phone, but audio quality today is poor. WebEx and Centra currently support voice over IP.

WebEx and PlaceWare allow you to use Webcams during online conferences so that attendees can see each other. WebEx allows a meeting's presenter to remain on screen until ceding control to another. With a high-speed connection, the video quality is reasonably good, although still too choppy and unsynchronized for normal conversation. Still, real-time video can be useful for showing people such items as product packaging, hardware, and so on.

Is It Secure?

Businesses worry about the security of third-party Web tools; you'll want a service that will maintain strict firewall protection and still allow collaboration over the Web. All of the major Web services work fine with most firewalls, but you should test them with yours (many services offer free trials). Some of the services offer optional Secure Sockets Layer encryption to protect communications. But SSL's heavy CPU demands can slow down communications--a potential problem over a modem connection.

Compared with the cost of travel, Web-based meeting services can be economical. For example, Genesys Meeting Center (based on Astound Conference Center) offers groups of up to 15 people unlimited usage for a dirt-cheap $40 per month. By contrast, WebEx costs $100 a month--or 45 cents per minute--for each user.

As online meeting services improve, they become more useful. "In light of the political and economic changes that have taken place over the past year, companies want safe, cost-effective alternatives to travel," says Roopam Jain, an analyst for the consulting firm Frost and Sullivan. "A lot of companies that are not ready to nose-dive into videoconferencing will try Web conferencing."

What You Can Do On The Web

• Application demos
• Document collaboration
• Online training
• Presentations
• Seminars/lectures
• Technical support

Web Conferencing: What You Get, What You Don't

Almost all Web-conferencing services provide whiteboarding and polling features, and allow you to give presentations and share applications. Differences still exist, however. See our chart for details on costs and additional features of four major Web-conferencing services.

Web conferencing: What you get, what you don't (chart)

Service	Cost	Macintosh support	Unix support	Teleconferencing	Voice over IP	Webcam integration	SSL option
Centra EMeeting	$80/seat/month	No	No	No	Yes	No	No
Genesys Meeting Center	$40/month (up to 15 users)	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
PlaceWare	$100/seat/month	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
WebEx Meeting Center	$0.45/minute/user or $100/seat/month	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Videoconferencing: If Face Time Counts

For some business dealings, there's no substitute for real-time, in-person collaboration. Salespeople, for example, rely heavily on face time. Though PC-mounted Webcams permit some visual contact, they deliver herky-jerky video. On the other hand, new plug-and-play videoconferencing systems with integrated collaboration tools appeal to businesses that have shunned videoconferencing in the past for being too expensive and difficult to use.

Products such as PictureTel's 600 series of appliances feature an integrated PC to support PowerPoint presentations and online collaboration. Such devices are ideal for conference rooms and work over LAN or ISDN connections. Starting at $6995, the PictureTel 600 is less expensive than previous comparable systems, but it obviously is not cheap.

No Inexpensive Option

More affordable, and still considerably more powerful than a basic Webcam, Polycom's $599 ViaVideo has a multimedia processor that the company says enhances videoconferencing over IP networks. (At press time, PictureTel had merged with Polycom. There was no news on how their respective product lines would be affected.)

The bottom line: Good quality, real-time videoconferencing still costs more than other methods of online collaboration. Aside from the cost of the camera systems (one for each participating person or group), you may have to invest heavily to upgrade your network to properly support the technology.

Still, the consulting firm Frost and Sullivan expects more companies to adopt videoconferencing systems and cut back on corporate travel. Says analyst Roopam Jain, "The economy has taken a beating, tragic events have affected air travel, and at the same time videoconferencing technology has gotten better."