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Why pay for airline tickets, wait in long lines, and spend hours traveling when current Web services let you work with colleagues in real time without leaving your office?

Web-meeting services first appeared a couple of years ago, but now they're easier to use and offer more online-collaboration features. Companies such as Centra Software, Genesys Conferencing, PlaceWare, and WebEx (the latter won our 2001 World Class Award for Best Group Application)--all offer tools that allow you to conduct both small meetings and large conferences from several sites.

Off-Road Features

Without leaving their desks, participants can converse, chat online, share applications, annotate documents, and in some cases see each other through Web-based video cameras.

These services are very good at what they do. Although they don't offer the benefits of real-time videoconferencing (see "Videoconferencing: If Face Time Counts," below), they handle just about everything else. In fact, Web-meeting services generally offer better collaboration tools than videoconferencing systems can.

You can use Web-meeting services to deliver slide-show presentations in real time, broadcast company information, conduct question-and-answer sessions, mark up documents with several colleagues, and even take control of a remote PC, whether to demonstrate a software program or to troubleshoot a system problem. In addition, they're incredibly easy to use: All you need is a Web browser, an Internet connection, and your computer's standard mouse and keyboard.

The services can be an excellent choice for companies that want to safely and cheaply pull together people who need to interact, collaborate, or learn.

How to Choose

Typically, online tools address two main types of collaboration: small meetings of a few individuals, and large conferences with a presenter or a moderator (or a teacher, in the case of an online classroom). Most major companies offer the same basic collaboration tools, but you should look for some key features.

If your company uses several computing platforms, look for a service that works with all of them. WebEx Meeting Center, for instance, supports Mac and Unix systems as well as Windows PCs; Centra EMeeting supports only Windows (see the chart "Web Conferencing: What You Get, What You Don't"). And all the services work best over high-speed Internet hookups, but some participants may be on a standard modem connection. Some services say you can get by on a 28.8-kbps modem, but you really need at least a 56-kbps connection to enjoy true collaboration, including application sharing and online presentations.

Since no Web-based tool can replace voice communication completely, you'll want a service with integrated teleconferencing--the ability to set up a phone call with multiple participants. Someday, voice-over-IP technology may save you money by letting you use your PC as a phone, but audio quality today is poor. WebEx and Centra currently support voice over IP.

WebEx and PlaceWare allow you to use Webcams during online conferences so that attendees can see each other. WebEx allows a meeting's presenter to remain on screen until ceding control to another. With a high-speed connection, the video quality is reasonably good, although still too choppy and unsynchronized for normal conversation. Still, real-time video can be useful for showing people such items as product packaging, hardware, and so on.

Is It Secure?

Businesses worry about the security of third-party Web tools; you'll want a service that will maintain strict firewall protection and still allow collaboration over the Web. All of the major Web services work fine with most firewalls, but you should test them with yours (many services offer free trials). Some of the services offer optional Secure Sockets Layer encryption to protect communications. But SSL's heavy CPU demands can slow down communications--a potential problem over a modem connection.

Compared with the cost of travel, Web-based meeting services can be economical. For example, Genesys Meeting Center (based on Astound Conference Center) offers groups of up to 15 people unlimited usage for a dirt-cheap $40 per month. By contrast, WebEx costs $100 a month--or 45 cents per minute--for each user.

As online meeting services improve, they become more useful. "In light of the political and economic changes that have taken place over the past year, companies want safe, cost-effective alternatives to travel," says Roopam Jain, an analyst for the consulting firm Frost and Sullivan. "A lot of companies that are not ready to nose-dive into videoconferencing will try Web conferencing."

What You Can Do On The Web

• Application demos
  
  
• Document collaboration
  
  
• Online training
  
  
• Presentations
  
  
• Seminars/lectures
  
  
• Technical support
  
  

Web Conferencing: What You Get, What You Don't

Almost all Web-conferencing services provide whiteboarding and polling features, and allow you to give presentations and share applications. Differences still exist, however. See our chart for details on costs and additional features of four major Web-conferencing services.

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