Web Conferencing Blog

Last weekend, the biggest update in the six-year history of webconferencing-test.com went live. Almost all aspects of our portal have been reworked to enhance the value and the usability of the site:

• Compare Tools Pro now allows visitors to compile a tailored dossier of data from our 30-plus tool tests, offering detailed information on over 80 functions and criteria for all solutions. The service (which is subject to a charge) supports organizations in simplifying and accelerating the expensive and time-consuming process of evaluating web conferencing platforms.
• The new Compare Tools Free option offers initial guidance for those searching for the right software. As the name suggests, this service is free of charge. Portal visitors can select the tools they are interested in and compile a compact, comparative overview of test results for their shortlist. Aggregated results are given for the following categories: functionality, usability, meeting setup, software installation, cost transparency, security, and system requirements.
• What’s more, webconferencing-test.com now includes a guide on how to select the right solution (Evaluation Guide), and new test criteria for video- and audioconferencing functionality. A new, featured ranking offers a quick overview of the videoconferencing functionality of each web conferencing solution.

Why have we re-launched the portal?

When webconferencing-test.com first went live back in 2006, we began by testing the five most popular online meeting tools and presenting the results in a table. Since then, the number of virtual meeting offerings we test has risen to over 30. Our goal was to bring transparency to this market – which means ensuring we consider as many solutions as possible.

As the years went on, our portal was limited by one key factor: Only results for the top five tools were shown in detail, broken down by specific criteria. We just assumed that for the majority of users, complete results for the five best-ranked platforms would be enough. Why should we deal in detail with those that didn’t make it into the top five?

A flood of feedback from portal visitors told us why. As it turns out, there is significant interest in accessing in-depth test results for lower-placed tools, too – for a number of good reasons. Perhaps you have already worked with a certain tool (and would like to see how your experience compares to our findings), or maybe you are looking for very specific functions, which are provided by one of the tools ranked 6th or below (such as web conferencing software for visually impaired users, for example).

Moreover, it has become clear to us over time that it is not just self-employed professionals and smaller companies that use our website as a starting point for selecting a web conferencing platform – many larger organizations do, too. The feedback from these enterprise users can be summarized as follows: our portal saves them the time and effort of identifying all the relevant players and painstakingly compiling the facts and figures for each provider.

But for these larger organizations, too, the fact that detailed results were only given for the top five solutions limited the usefulness of our comparison. In fact, when it comes to enterprise implementations, there are special criteria – that we could not take into account – that often play a key role. For example, companies may wish to shortlist a provider who is already a preferred supplier, or a solution that can be easily integrated into the existing IT infrastructure. Prime examples include IBM (in 11th place at present) and Microsoft (ranked 8th and 17th).

If our analysis of the benefits and limitations of the previous incarnation of webconferencing-test.com stands up, then the introduction of the Compare Tools Pro service should significantly boost the attractiveness of our portal.

But why don’t we offer this enhanced service free of charge? After all, commercial considerations were not our main motivation when we originally launched our portal. There is a simple answer. This is primarily an experiment to find out how willing professional web users are to pay for valuable content on the Internet. Moreover, if the results are positive, we will naturally be glad to recoup some of the considerable ongoing investment we make into conducting and extending our tests.

We hope and believe that we are offering our visitors excellent value for money. Our approach is the opposite of the conventional model for generating revenues with advisory content. IT research and advisory companies such as Gartner exploit their high brand awareness and reputation to sell their research results at a steep price.

Take the following example: Gartner sell its annual “Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing” report (18 pages) for US $1,995.00. This publication deals with twelve web conferencing providers, without a detailed analysis of the functionality and usability of the solutions. As a niche portal, webconferencing-test.com may not enjoy the same brand awareness, but offers far more detailed content on the facts and features of each web conferencing solution. If you want to buy the test results for all 34 tools we have published information on, it costs just US $69.50 during the introductory period, and US $139 after that. And in reality, the vast majority of visitors pay much less. For example, if you already have a shortlist of four “favorites” and want a quick, fact-based comparison, you can generate this dynamically for just US $9.50.

So you only pay for what you actually need – sounds like a fair deal, doesn’t it? We look forward to seeing whether the 10,000 visitors to our website every month agree. And we would be delighted to hear your feedback on our brand new portal.

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.

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.

Video has been in use privately for quite some time but has been ridiculously slow in regards of becoming really useful for business online collaboration. Now that an increasing number of employees who need to attend or host online meetings either have a mobile computing device with a built-in camera or an external webcam plugged in, web conferencing vendors feel the time has come to integrate video into their solutions. And since internet connections are getting faster and faster why not go to HD while they are at it?

Now where does this leave us and our ranking of online meeting tools? Well, first of all there will be no shift of focus. We will not rank a tool higher just because it makes it possible for you to wave into a camera. The focus will remain on functionalities that enable and/or enhance online collaboration. Desktop screen sharing and the document- and information-centric joint working with applications really is the key to all online collaboration technologies.

So far we had only figured in video at the margin, giving a tool a minor increase in overall score if it enabled video. But this yes/no logic really does not reflect this specific functionality well enough anymore. If a vendor offers video in his software we want to know the following:

• Can you scale the videos? It is really annoying if you have huge heads staring at you while you try to read text on a presentation that is displayed in a corner of the screen. Users should be able to move cameras and re-size them to their liking.
• How does a tool handle the enormous amount of data being streamed? The software must be backed up by a powerful server infrastructure that can handle all data upstreams and downstreams. Regardless of the number of participants or the single participants’ internet connection the tool must deliver video without compromising the overall quality of the online meeting.
• Are voice and video connected? If two or three people are in a conference it is fairly easy to identify the speaker. But if you have six participants in a conference and are discussing a document that is being displayed you do not want to be stuck having to check whose lips are moving. So the current speaker should be highlighted by the tool.
• Are voice and video not only connected but in sync? You don’t want to be talking and see that on the screen your lips are moving a second later than when you are actually forming the words.

We will consider these options – and potentially more we might consider useful – in our future tests and make sure that video has a greater influence on overall score than it currently has. Video can really enhance an online meeting if it is integrated into the software wisely. Video functionality must seamlessly fit into the tool and really offer the users an additional advantage. It is all about user friendliness and if video doesn’t enhance the usability of a web conferencing solution it shouldn’t be integrated in the first place.

We at Online Meeting Tools Review have treated video conferencing as a side aspect so far. But there currently is a trend in the online collaboration market to include high quality video into well structured web conferencing tools, opening up many new possibilities for holding online meetings.

Until recently video was basically being used in businesses for the following two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Many larger companies had proprietary high-end conferencing systems installed in dedicated meeting rooms, based on the technology provided by Cisco, Polycom, Tandberg and the likes. These served as a somewhat expensive toy in C-Level meetings spread over various locations and even continents.

Scenario 2: Teams spread over different locations make use of low-end solutions. There are basically two ways for teams to collaborate using video conferencing technology:

1. Freeware such as Skype and now also Google+ hangouts are an easy way to connect. The only requirement is that all participants need to have an account for the respective platform before they can start a video conference. With Skype users get some web conferencing functionalities as the tool allows e.g. screen sharing. However, many organizations prohibit users from using tools like Skype, due to security concerns.
2. Apple and Microsoft make it possible: Teams can also collaborate via tools that are tied to the respective OS or vendor-based server technologies, such as Apple’s iChat and Microsoft’s Lync and OCS (Office Communication Server). These do work pretty well for video conferencing, however typically only within the organization’s firewall.

Another general restriction to video conferencing used to be the relatively low number of users with webcams. This is becoming less of an issue due to huge increases in mobile devices which usually feature a built-in webcam of some sorts and of course cheap external devices that can be used via plug and play. Privately these have been used for quite some time now and web conferencing vendors are now feeling conditions have changed sufficiently for them to integrate video into their solutions and actually offer customers additional value by doing so.

So with business users having their webcams in place, strong enough internet connections to actually allow HD (High Definition) video streaming it seems that conditions are near perfect for web conferencing vendors to integrate video into their tools. We will give you our take on this trend shortly and we’ll let you know how we will be figuring video functionality into our overall ranking.

Are you currently using a video conferencing solution on a regular basis for business purposes? If so just leave a comment and let us know what solution you are using and how that is working out for you.