While the economy is starting to stable out, it is still a fairly common practice for businesses to search for cost savings, especially when it comes to travel expenses. And as such, enterprises are turning to web conferencing as a must-have tool.
With web conferencing, employees and customers can “meet” for live meetings and share ideas and documents without ever leaving their own offices. And as more and more companies discover the economic and social value of communicating and sharing documents through a Web-based interface, the technology’s popularity keeps growing.
ReadyShow web conferencing and video conferencing services have shown a steady increase in sales in the face of a slow economy and threats of swine flu and other global concerns. ReadyShow Web collaboration solution lets companies and clients tailor the service to meet their specific needs. The on-demand service also lets companies and users conduct conferences either on a scheduled basis or “on-the-fly.” The service, which requires a bandwidth of 200K for each video, operates at 10 frames per second.
Software company Virox, who has developed voice chat software for games and virtual worlds such as Second Life, is beta-testing a plug-in that lets users add a ‘voice channel’ to their Facebook page allowing for simple video conferencing among friends and peers.
Virox Spokesperson Karen Blondell:
It’s a simple browser plug-in. You can invite as many friends as you want to the channel.
Pending successful testing, the free plug-in should be available in about three to four weeks, although the current beta test is closed to the general public. This isn’t a no-frills, one-to-one chat app either.
As big as your group is, you can hold conference calls, podcasts. You can have two people in a channel, or several.
Users will also be able to talk with people who don’t use Facebook. Vivox will provide a phone number for non-users to call in and join the conversation. It’s unclear at this time, however, if Vivox will charge for this dial-in feature.
The plug-in should prove popular to third-party Facebook application developers. For example: games with an integrated voice component would be a natural fit for the Vivox app. And retailers who’ve set up shop on Facebook could use the plug-in to chat with customers.
In many ways, the Vivox app sounds a lot like web conferencing software such as WebEx and GoToMeeting, albeit on a much simpler scale.
ACT extends new services to customers worldwide to support increased need for video conferencing in additional markets. Due to the demand world wide for it’s services, the company today announced that it’s offering new managed video conferencing services intended for existing customers and to hopefully bring in new ones in need of video conferencing solutions.
ACT will now offer customers direct access to an experienced team that oversees all facets of video conferencing — from strategy to consulting on purchase of equipment to implementation of global, multimedia events. The company will develop customized video conferencing solutions and provide real-time customer service 24×7, relieving clients’ internal staff of technical support duties. In addition, ACT’s all-inclusive monthly pricing model ensures a consistent, predictable cost, regardless of the amount of collaboration required.
Act Conferencing Strategy Director Gary Iles:
With video conferencing now a routine part of daily meetings, many IT organizations are struggling to deliver consistent, customized and cost-effective video conferencing,ACT’s managed video services are customized for each client so we can help them leverage their existing infrastructure with our world class service and client support, which lends to a significant reduction in operating expenses.
The upgrades include round-the-clock tech support, enhanced quality of service and security with proactive bridge monitoring, in-conference support, maintenance, reports and more. Other additions include endpoint monitoring and management, allowing meetings to run smoothly with remote device monitoring, problem diagnostics, standards compliance, password management, software updates and reports.
The Asia-Pacific video conferencing endpoints market is expected to grow by 15.3 percent this year, as the economy continues to stay flat and conventional travel continues to reduce. Total revenues are estimated to reach US$379.4 million by the end of 2009.
Analysts expect the market to continue to grow for the next 4 years before plateauing. The Asia-Pacific Video Conferencing Endpoints Market, finds that the market –overing 13 Asia-Pac countries — earned revenues of US$329.1 million in 2008 and estimates this to grow at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 17.7 percent (2009-2015). Frost & Sullivan predicts the market will be worth just over US$1.0 billion by end-2015.
Frost and Sullivan Analyst, Nath:
This upbeat outlook for video conferencing solutions is buoyed by the need for real-time collaboration as productivity tools, and the increasing availability of next-generation video conferencing devices and compression technologies.
Adoption in the more mature economies such as Australia, Japan and South Korea have been dominated by the corporate sector, particularly the banking, financial services and insurance industry. High-definition video conferencing solutions were the clear favourite for new deployments in these markets.
iFunia, and developer of Mac tools and utilities has announced a new HD Video Converter for Mac now supports converting AVCHD into other HD video or SD video types. The support of AVCHD helps Mac consumers enrich the high definition experience and get the most out of their digital lifestyle. Videos can be converted into formats compatible with video conferencing services and devices such as iPods, iPhones, Apple TV, PSPs, and BlackBerrys.
iFunia President, Raymond Cha:
The support of AVCHD powered by iFunia brings a unique new capability to iFunia HD Video Converter for Mac. AVCHD support represents a compelling complement to the big digital media capability we offer, allowing Mac consumers to effortlessly convert AVCHD video into the format they need for greater enjoyment.
Designed as a powerful Mac HD converter, iFunia HD Video Converter also features editing capabilities including watermarks, video cropping and trimming, along with controls for brightness, contrast and saturation. Users can also change the video bitrate, size and frame rate for a desired quality or compression.
The HD Video Converter for Mac is now available through the iFunia website. Exclusively for the Mac OS platform, requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher and is available from the iFunia online store for $32.
iFunia is a multimedia and compression technologies company dealing mainly with Mac operating systems and software.
Webconferencing is a cost-effective, and productive way to meet and collaborate online at a fraction of the cost of conventional travel. On the market for more than 10 years now, webconferencing has proven itself a worthwhile tool for many companies, however it still only has a 35 percent market penetration. This is likely due to a few factors, including user
frustrations with difficulties in joining meetings, download times of files and other general failures of the webconferencing service.
InstantPresenter, a web-based webonferencing tool, prevents these problems and frustrations with a robust, full-featured service that allows users to easily connect to meetings from anywhere on the world via any computer that has a Flash-enabled
web browser and a reliable internet connection. Online PowerPoint presentations are converted into the Flash format by the presenter, so slides play as quickly as browsing any website. There are no sofware downloads to wait for and connectivity is instant.
The full-featured web conferencing service provides video conferencing, screen sharing, online PowerPoint slides, whiteboards, chat and a host of other collaboration features. The service allows you to be online with the people you need to collaborate with or present to in a matter of seconds, all with the reliability of a proven service that will make the process simple for both the presenter and the audience.
Preezo is an online presentation tool that lets you quickly put together a presentation, email it or share it online. Preezo is powered by Ajax and is entirely web-based. The system is very fast and I noticed almost no lag in clicking through the menus, unlike Google Docs, which can slow down a bit at times. The application is free to use after registration and the interface is very similar to PowerPoint, however there are only 6 templates that you can start with, although for this application that seemed sufficient.
Preezo offers six templates for designing your presentation and 20 different font types. Like PowerPoint, you can choose from hundreds of background colors or even use a background image. The system allows you to upload images into the presentation directly from your hardrive (and not from a URL like some similar applications do). Slide transitions and other effects from PowerPoint are also available.
Preezo allows you to view your presentation in normal mode, slide sorter mode and slideshow mode for presentations. While all of these features are very similar to PowerPoint, the main drawback of the application is that it can not edit real PowerPoint files that you’ve already created. So while this is great for creating a quick presentation to share online, it’s not a complete online PowerPoint presentation solution for users that need to move back and forth between the web and their local computer.
As the economy continues to sour, more and more businesses are forgoing the travel and expense accounts and are setting up video conferencing and other electronic collaboration alternatives.
In a recent study conducted by Regus, an organization that supplies working spaces in 75 countries, the worldwide demand for special rooms to accomodate video conferencing and telepresence technology increased 40% (30% in Italy). Regus has supplied thousands of offices and business centers around the world to support video conferencing and business is on the rise. A video conference that replaces a conventional meeting, particularly when parties would have to travel to other countries, easily saves 75% of the cost. Not only is the cost savings great, but video conferencing offers greater productivity, less wear and tear on employees who travel and is also enviromentally friendly.
Regus Executive:
A videoconference not only cancels travel expenses but mainly allows to chose better times, avoiding losses of time due to movements and the limits imposed by fixed departure times
The affect on air and rail travel has also been affected by the economy and travelers who have defected to electronic means of communication. The Rome to Milan route in Italy for both air and rail are trying desperately to win back travelers who have found started using video conferencing as an alternative.
Vaddio Products, a leader in high end video conferencing and web conferencing cameras and control units has teamed up with Total Webcasting to support their new mobile conferencing system called TW Media Cart. Total Webcasting is a full service webcasting company and selected a host of Vaddio products to create their latest offering. Total Webcasting has been been providing webcasting services since 2000 and has hosted a range of events from government, coporate and sporting events.
The Total Webcasting media cart is comprised of a the ProductionVIEW FX console, three smaller LCD monitors rack-mounted monitors, two Vadio Model 70 Pan/Tilt/Zoom camera systems, an audio mixer with dual microphones, a media encoder that supports various formats, and all the other functionality to support a live webcast.
Total Webcasting President, Robert Feldman:
The TW Media cart allows my guys to pack up on the fly, set up quickly, do the webcast and be on our way with only one person. Having a small, portable system in New York City is a necessity. We can now transport all of our equipment in a car – not a van, unload it several blocks away and roll it to our destination – easily and efficiently. Because of the popularity of the TW Media Carts, we are now manufacturing them as a TW product to help other AV companies in similar live-event situations.”
The heart of the TW Media cart is the Vaddio ProductionView FX console. The system handles video switching, camera control with joystick movement and controls the Model 70 camera systems over Cat 5 cable supplying power and video up to 200 feet. The single cable-to-camera solution reduces the number of cords and power outlets required, making it easier to setup and transport the system.
Today, Vidyo, a leader in personal telepresence and video conferencing solutions announced another $15 million of capital raised for its flagship service from Menlo Ventures. The company has now raised a total of $38 million since it begain in 2005. Vidyo’s personal telepresence allows people to participate in high definition video conferences over IP networks. The additional capital will allow them to increase their marketing and product development strategies, and support their growing customer base.
Vidyo CEO, Ofer Shapiro:
We are excited that Menlo Ventures is leading our third financing round. Last year they made a small initial investment that provided them the ability to evaluate Vidyo’s potential and performance and they liked what they saw. The fact that we are able to raise a substantial amount of funding from such top tier investors during this global economic downturn, speaks volumes about the strength of our technology and products in the video conferencing market.
Today Vidyo also announced that it has licensed its H.264/SVC technology to telepresence provider Teliris, a leader in risk management solutions.
Menlo Ventures Director, Doug Carlisle:
We see Vidyo’s potential to disrupt the video conferencing market. In monitoring the company’s development over the past six months, we have observed their formation of important partnerships and rapid market acceptance. We are convinced that Vidyo will see significant growth in 2009.