Web Conferencing Blog

A week ago we became a registered Cisco partner – after unsuccessfully trying back in 2009 – and were quite happy about this. We needed some help for details regarding the creation of WebEx trial account links and were invited to a web conference with Cisco partner support – naturally via WebEx Meeting Center. We had an online meeting from our office in Frankfurt, Germany with a US-based representative and after further evaluation with a Cisco European Partner Advisor professional based in Portugal.

In both cases we were amazed to see that during screen sharing there was a latency of up to 5 seconds at some points! This naturally made communication a bit complicated since we needed to jump between lots of web pages on Cisco’s Partner Central extranet and never knew what the Cisco service desk was currently seeing.

As we have said before such latency can have various causes (and often it will be a combination of factors, e.g. slow local internet connection, insufficient compression of screen content by the software, limited backbone connectivity or server capacity on the part of the web conference provider, or the physical latency caused simply by large geographical distances). Since there are so many variables in this scenario, part of them not controllable by the web conference service provider, we have so far not included this as a criterion in our tests.

We feel that this needs to change: Considering that latencies of more than 1 second can impact an online meeting much more than ‘soft’ interface usability criteria or the ‘completeness’ of features and functions, we will develop a testing infrastructure that allows us to collect comparative data to make reliable statements about whether an online collaboration tool is comparatively slow or not.

After our meeting experience with Cisco we cannot help but be amazed: Of all vendors Cisco – as world leader in ‘all things connectivity’ – should have a powerful backbone connectivity that enables a seamless meeting experience. Since our internet connection was at full speed the day we had the two online meetings the question remains how well Cisco WebEx is suited for our usage scenario, which is using the Mac-client and sharing a screen with 1920x1200px. The new version of WebEx Meeting Center is about to be released – including HD video conferencing – and we will see if latency remains an issue.

In June we included a brief survey on webconferencing-test.com asking for the reasons visitors come to our site, how they got there and if they got what they expected. We have gotten quite a number of responses – thank you all! – and would like to present what our visitors had to say.

Looking at the reasons visitors came to our site revealed the following:

Most visitors (31%) were on the hunt for generic information about web conferencing to get familiar with the technology and different ways of online collaboration. 18% were on the verge of purchasing a solution and checked our site to confirm their buying decision. And we were happy to see that 8% of the visitors were current users of a web conferencing solution seeking tips and tricks on using the software in question. In addition, 21% chose our site to begin their search for a web conferencing solution and 9% were looking for news on the online collaboration market. The remaining 13% had their own reason to visit our site…

Of course we got many suggestions for tools to include in our tests, such as ICU Live! from ICU Global. We always appreciate such hints since the market has expanded greatly and it is impossible to keep track of all online collaboration software. The feedback we got relating to this issue, i.e. that our overview is not complete is correct. But some tools don’t appear on our list for the following reasons:

• Target group: If an online meeting tool vendor requires you to make changes to your IT infrastructure the tool is very likely not for our focus group – small to medium sized businesses or the self-employed – who are best of with ready-to-use solutions.
• Popularity: Finding a tool that works for you is great. But if you are one of the 10 total users it just may not have an appeal for a broader audience and we need to prioritize our resources when it comes to testing.
• Performance: Some tools are simply bad. Full stop. No need to include them in our ranking.

Another bit of feedback was that our pricing info was not detailed enough and that we should incorporate pricing models for more usage scenarios on our site. Availability of pricing information is an important factor for us as we also state in our test approach. That being said there is no way for us to depict all the different usage scenarios that might come into play for the various customers. What we depict is the overall cost model we find on the vendors’ websites and if you have special requirements you will be better of contacting the vendor of your choice directly.

Thanks again to all participants for the helpful feedback. We will continue to try and state all the information on online collaboration tools you might need and appreciate your feedback should we have missed anything.

Many companies currently still use NetMeeting. However, the tool’s shortcomings make it very inconvenient for continued usage which is why those companies are now on the lookout for an alternative web conferencing solution.

Incompatibility with Microsoft Office 2010 is only the last of issues that have made usage of NetMeeting quite tedious. If an online collaboration tool does not allow you to demonstrate a simple PowerPoint presentation there is something seriously wrong.

The whole issue started a while back when Microsoft decided to no longer support NetMeeting with the release of Windows Vista – NetMeeting had been a part of the Windows OS since Windows 95. After Vista came out companies using NetMeeting found workarounds to keep the tool running but now even those solutions will no longer work.

Why did NetMeeting become so popular in the first place one might ask. Well… it was there. Simple as that. Since it was integrated in Microsoft’s OS companies made use of it for their internal online collaboration even though the tool never really was good. So the end of life offers a twofold opportunity for current NetMeeting users:

• Companies can select an online meeting solution that enables collaboration to go beyond the firewall and allows for meetings with external participants without compromising security.
• Prospective tools can be evaluated for the exact functionalities needed to guarantee ease-of-use.

Online collaboration tools come in many colors and it is essential to look at the basics before purchasing a specific solution. Would a unified communication solution such as Lync be best or rather a standalone solution such as LiveMeeting? And then of course there is the question of hosted vs. on-premise.

With its demise NetMeeting poses some serious challenges to the companies that use it. On our site you can read about the different approaches the vendors of web conferencing solutions take.

You know this feeling: You are sitting somewhere and your eyes wander back to one and the same person and all of a sudden you realize ‘hey, he looks exactly like …’. Well, we had that exact same feeling when we tested ClickMeeting. We were checking out the new video functionality and all of a sudden we realized ‘hey, this looks exactly like Adobe Connect’!

Well it sure does. ClickMeeting is pretty much an exact copy of Adobe Connect 8. And ClickMeeting is a good copy, too. One of our testers found it a bit complex but really the functionalities offered can be arranged on the screen nicely to make sure participants are not left confused by the various little screens you can use. The new video functionality worked really well, too. The single webcams were resizable and video quality was also good.

But there is a reason why ClickMeeting ranks lower than Adobe Connect 8. Unlike with Adobe Connect 8 there is no Outlook integration for ClickMeeting hosts. The missing of marking tools in screen sharing mode also makes you aware that ClickMeeting currently doesn’t offer what online meeting participants should be able to take for granted. Therefore we cannot rank the tool higher than number 9.

Cisco, RHUB and Microsoft – the web conferencing vendors ranked numbers three through five – will have to each step down a rank. BeamYourScreen, formerly ranked number seven, is now available for download in version 4 and brings many enhancements. Just as with the release of version 3 last year, when the tool climbed from rank 18 to 6, the developers once again have done a great job in actually improving the software.

Version 4 of BeamYourScreen comes in an all new layout which is nice and lean and makes for intuitive usage. Users can also adapt the range of functionalities for every single meeting. What we weren’t too exited about is the minimum 12 month contract duration. There are other small disadvantages, too but overall the web conferencing solution has been greatly improved and thus only stops short of knocking Citrix GoToMeeting and Adobe Connect 8 from numbers one and two.

If you decide to try out the new version of BeamYourScreen let us know what you think of it and post your experiences.

Citrix, Adobe and Cisco: Three of the biggest online meeting solutions vendors have now integrated video functionality into their solutions. We checked them out and here is what we found:

All three tools offer not only video but rather HD video. And yes, the quality is very impressive. Citrix GoToMeeting limits the number of webcam participants to 6 unlike Cisco WebEx which allows up to 500 participants or Adobe Connect 8 where you have no restrictions at all. But as always bigger isn’t necessarily better. One downside of a video conference with let us say 20 participants is that you will need a lot of bandwidth to really get that HD quality. And with every new participant that joins the webcams on display just get smaller and smaller. Now we haven’t tried it with 20 participants ourselves but it probably is hard to see who is actually speaking.

Next to the number of possible participants the ease of integrating video into a conference was another important item on our list. All three tools did well when it comes to basic integration and Adobe and Citrix lead the way when it comes to flexibility. Users can resize the webcams on display or place them wherever it is most convenient on their screens.

A nice touch was linking the videos to VoIP, which GoToMeeting and WebEx offer. What does that mean? Well, the webcam of the current speaker is highlighted (Citrix) or centered (WebEx). The centering can give you a headache, though. Just imagine a discussion between 10 participants with frequently changing speakers…

Overall, Citrix really did the best job of integrating HD video. The new functionality is lean and easy to use. It blends into the overall tool very well and covers the scenarios ‘video-only’ and ‘video combined with screen sharing’ best.

But Adobe and Cisco don’t trail by far so if you are used to meeting online with one of the two you are very likely to be satisfied with the video conferencing option either one offers.

BeamYourScreen version 4 went live today as planned. However, we haven’t updated our ranking yet. We have tested the tool and formed our verdict but when we double checked the also new website today we noticed that there currently is no pricing info on display. We contacted BeamYourScreen and were told that the information will be included on the site shortly.

Since we regard openly available pricing information on vendors’ websites as a crucial point in our evaluations we will wait with updating our ranking until it is fully displayed on the BeamYourScreen site.

Along with other users we have been doing some beta testing of BeamYourScreen’s new version 4, which will be released tomorrow. You will find the software for download on BeamYourScreen’s then also new website.

Our tests have yielded results that will have an impact on our ranking of web conferencing solutions. As soon as the new version is out and running we will update the ranking accordingly.

The Japanese vendor LiveOn asked us to test their online meeting solution. At the risk of spoiling the suspense: The tool didn’t make it into our ranking.

But let us start at the beginning. The basic functionalities are all there and if we had to choose the scenario this solution is best suited for we’d say it definitely is online meetings planned in advance. Video is the central aspect of the solution, displaying the participant’s webcam streams in the main window. Functionalities such as whiteboard and screen sharing can be added in separate windows.

Now to the shortcomings… The tool runs on Windows only which really is a large restriction as we pointed out earlier – “Mac users are being neglected”. There are neither one-click meetings nor recurring meetings, and you can only enter a meeting room at the time the meeting is scheduled, no earlier. When we started our meeting it took us 8 minutes from clicking “enter room” to actually arriving in the room. Finally, there was no pricing information posted on the website.

User-friendliness and meeting-setup are the two major areas for improvement. The solution shows promise, but currently cannot be considered a serious alternative to the market leaders.

Google is going social. Now it is hard to come up with revolutionary concepts when others like Facebook have brought social networking to near perfection and solutions like Skype make you wonder how video chatting could be any easier. Google+ aims at providing all these services, manageable under one convenient location.

Since we focus on web conferencing we checked how easy it is to conduct meetings online with our Google+ test account. At the moment a Google+ participant can invite you to “hang out”. You will see this invitation posted on your Google+ account only, meaning there are no email invitations currently available.

So we hung out and checked which features Google+ provides. Video is easy and performs well. You also have a text chat option. The YouTube button is a nice touch, but it is still not working properly, i.e. not everyone can see the video – but that most likely has to do with Google still refining its service.

The bottom line for us is: Video, audio, and text chats are there which allow for rudimentary online collaboration. The fact that you need to be a member of the service and logged in to participate is a minus considering that for online meetings you want to have a barrier free experience rather than forcing every participant to open an account before joining a meeting. Screen sharing is what we definitely would expect to be added next. Throw in email notifications and the possibility to schedule meetings and we’re talking. But currently, Google+ really only is a place to hang out. And even with all those features added it just might not be the tool of choice for web conferencing.