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PlaceWare:
Web Conferencing
The Need
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Proper
training of employees, partners and customers is critical to
gaining a competitive edge in the marketplace. But most
traditional training methods require an in-person meeting.
Flying hundreds of people the training facilities, or sending
a trainer, cannot only deplete budget, but also eat up
valuable time that could be spent on more productive
activities. And today, with decreasing product lifecycles and
tremendous pressure to make monthly sales goals, a faster and
more effective training method is needed. With
the emergence of the Web conferencing, it is believed that training program can
be more efficient, worldwide, and inexpensive. |

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The Technology
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PlaceWare Web
conference is simply the combination of a phone call with live
web-based visuals and interaction. Web
conferencing enables presenter to communicate more
effectively, decreasing the amount of time spent traveling and
ultimately leading the audience to understanding. Business professionals can use
a wide variety of rich visual content to get their message
across while actively engaging their audience and receiving
real-time feedback with live interaction. Types of rich
content includes, PowerPoint slides delivered in real-time,
annotation tools, live software demonstrations, polling,
whiteboards, web tours and streaming audio and video.

The presenter is given full
control of the meeting to ensure that they can deliver their
message in a compelling manner. Presenters can control content
but can also control the level of interactivity during a
presentation including the participant's ability to ask
text-based questions, review slides, chat and indicate their
"mood" through the seating chart. In smaller
collaborative meetings oriented towards workgroups who need to
closely collaborate over a document or idea, even more
interactivity is possible, such as creating new content on the
fly and illustrating points collaborative on whiteboards.

PlaceWare Web conferences can
quickly and efficiently train up to 2,500 people. The
presenter can even interactively demo new software in real
time-including software not installed on participant's
computers-using the LiveDemo(TM) feature
in PlaceWare. |
The Benefits
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The benefits that a
company can get from Placeware are:
- Simple Deployment:
- Browser-based
- No Plug-ins required
- Hosting
- Ease of Use:
- Intuitive audience and
presenter interface
- Use existing PowerPoint
- Drag and drop uploading
- Easy create new content
- Realibility/Scalability:
- FireWall Transparent
- Up to 2,500 concurrent
users
- Low bandwidth
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Status
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PlaceWare's
Conference Center 2000™ is the latest version. The service
is comprised of four unique services:
- Corporate:
A scalable, multi-user solution for a department,
division, or enterprise.
- MyPlaceWare:
It is ideal for individuals and smaller organizations
requiring a Web conference account to communicate and
collaborate with globally dispersed stakeholders.
- Portal:
A service for portal sites to integrate self-service Web
conferencing as a service for their end users, giving
portals the flexibility to custom brand their Web
conferencing offering.
- Service Provider:
A solution for service providers that provides the
end-to-end tools and services necessary to bundle Web
conferencing for resale with their own services.
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Barriers
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PlaceWare is using
telephone system and the Internet, which are based on different
types of protocols and technologies, to deliver the voice and
visual information. There will be
time difference of acceptance between voice and visual
information that may get worst as the Internet connection is
slower. |
Points of Contact
- Sales, PlaceWare,
295 N. Bernardo Ave. Mountain View, CA 94043, Phone: (888)
526-6170, Fax: (650) 526-6199, sales@placeware.com
References
- PlaceWare, http://www.placeware.com
Disclaimer Statement
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Neither the Construction
Industry Institute nor Purdue University in any way endorses this
technology or represents
that the information presented can be relied upon without further investigation. |
MA36 |