Today's Web Conferencing Landscape

The Web conferencing marketplace is becoming ever competitive as organizations of all sizes seek new tools to reach out to their remote employees, partners, and vendors.

Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, a re-branded version of Macromedia Breeze. is an entry into the Web conferencing marketplace that can change the whole landscape. A Web conferencing solution leveraging open standards like Adobe Flash opens up online conferences to participants on multiple platforms including Windows XP/Vista, Macintosh OS X, and Linux. However, Adobe’s challenge in the Web conferencing space is branding and identification.  Typically, knowledge workers associate Adobe Acrobat with Adobe Acrobat Standard and/or Professional. However, there are leagues of users who associate Adobe Acrobat with Adobe Acrobat Reader. This brand association could prove a challenge to Adobe as Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro snakes its way from the closed door offices of the decision makers  to the cubicle world of the users. This solution’s big differentiator is the fact that Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro doesn’t require a download of  proprietary client to a local hard drive.

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, many of us live in a Microsoft world, with them serving as an Office suite, IM (Instant Messaging) and email (Microsoft Exchange Server) platform places Microsoft as a leading player when it comes to Web conferencing platforms. Microsoft’s Unified Communications strategy could also prove  Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to be a contender in the Web conferencing market. However, with the burdens of market leadership also come challenges like the market adoption of the 2007 Microsoft Office system in the marketplace.

Web-Ex, a venerable and old school Web conferencing platform, could see a revival with their recent acquisition by Cisco. However, they could take some flak as they require a proprietary client download although they have a large base of marketing and PR people who swear by Web-Ex as Web conferencing and software demonstration platform.

Hosted versus server-based solutions are also going to be another differentiator with Web conferencing especially when it comes to SMBs (Small to Medium Businesses) selecting a solution and organizations who have to observe compliance programs like Coso and Sarbanes-Oxley which require the logging of all electronic communications thus meaning these organizations would want to manage their own conferencing solutions.

Web conferencing is a competitive landscape beset by open standards, organization requirements, and pricing and the rise of Unified Communications and other vendor strategies should bring some energy to this market space.

Comments

[Michael Fitzpatrick]

This is a fair assessment of the landscape. I think one of the "new frontiers" for web conferencing is true contextual collaboration, where web conferencing becomes an integrated part of doing business vs. a silo'd application. Acrobat Connect, which my company is deeply involved with, has tremendous potential here with mature web services and meeting customization.

[Mike McKinnon]

This is a nice assesment. Don't forget that while WebEx, Adobe and Live Meeting battle it out in the collaboration space, three is also the need for high touch web seminars that is still a wide open space. These types of seminars require introductions, speaker management, Q&A, post event follow-up, registration and a whole host of other personalized services. While all of the above mentioned services, dabble in this area no vendor has made it a focus as of yet. At ReadyTalk (www.readytalk.com) we specialize in these types of services and have a new release coming soon that will provide even more functionality to this type of conference.