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Table of Contents » Types of Web Conferencing Systems » “Enterprise” Web Conferencing Systems
“Enterprise” Web Conferencing Systems
"Enterprise" Web conferencing systems are used to create and manage online presentations and conferences that replace and add upon traditional meetings. The goal is generally one of balancing off the large investments and great number of human resources generally required when large meetings are to be held at physical locations.
In marketing, sales and training situations, "enterprise" conferencing systems have proven to be valuable assets to large organizations and commercial companies wishing to extend their reach while lowering their costs.
While running online virtual meetings and conferences is not the same as running traditional events, and there are indeed many aspects of a live presentation that need to be taken care of, the effectiveness of well-run online events is self-evident.
Participants can access the event from their desk, office computer, or even from home or any location where they can have Internet access. In the case of organizations using such a system only "inside" the organization, meetings can be called for with a shorter time frame, and effective use of audio and video facilities can significantly enhance exchanges and brainstorming sessions that would have been hard to call in through traditional and more formal routes.
"Enterprise" Web conferencing systems also offer quality communication and presentation tools rarely available in the less expensive, SOHO-targeted alternatives included in this report. These may include advanced PowerPoint presentation facilities, quality polling tools, sophisticated live annotation and mark-up tools as well as effective monitoring and feedback tools for the participants.
While some of the SOHO systems do sport such features they are still rare and have some evident limitations.
"Enterprise" Web conferencing systems are more robust in terms of the quantity of users they can handle at any one time. While SOHO systems generally target groups of 5-30 users, the "enterprise" systems typically target audiences of 50-100 or more concurrent participants.
Most, if not all, of these systems are sold as a server license software to be installed and configured on a corporate server. Thus, one should account also for the cost and maintenance of the hardware supporting this unit. Also, to be able to support the data traffic generated by such meetings with large number of participants, the organization must make available sufficient bandwidth to guarantee that all users and attendees will have prompt response and feedback from the system. This may require very large amounts of bandwidth available to the presenting organization as an audio/video outgoing channel from the presenter may require 80 Kbps/per user or more of bandwidth to guarantee a smooth delivery of the live presentation (100 users = 8000 Kbps = 8 Mbps sustained bandwidth required).
Alternatively, many of the "enterprise" systems providers do also provide a "hosted" solution, allowing companies to "rent" the service needed without having to install software and without the need for setting up a dedicated server with its associated bandwidth. All of these factors are handled by the provider, who then asks its corporate customers for a per minute/per seat charge.
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Characteristics