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PlaceWare: Web Conferencing
The Need
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.
The Technology
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
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
Status
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.
Barriers
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
Refrences
- PlaceWare, http://www.placeware.com
Disclaimer Statement
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.