The Evolution of Web Conferencing: When Face to Face Interactions Are Now Possible

Timesare changing really fast. A document needs to be analyzed within 24 hours. Meeting has to take place as soon as possible. For busy businessmen, traveling from one place to another in different locations takes up too much time and costs. Every minute counts in businesses, especially if it keeps up with the current trends and changes in the market. But technologies are already in hand to create virtual teams and set up meetings with participants scattered around the globe regardless of the time. Now you can hold your meetings without the need for the other members to be physically present in the boardrooms. If you are doing a business in a global market, web conferencing can surely make a difference to help you manage your hectic schedule.

Web conferencing is conducting virtual meetings online or live presentation with the help of their own computer which is connected to other participants via the Internet. The most common feature of it is screen sharing whereby the participants see the presentation through the screen. It can come in a form of service hosted on a web service sold by a vendor for a fixed fee. Other conferencing software eliminates the need for a server as it operates on a peer to peer basis but this type of software is ideal only for small groups. Other features of web conference include slide presentations, application sharing, web co-browsing, annotation, text messaging, file sharing and polls or surveys.

Before the advent of web conferencing technologies such as email and telephone help in getting messages and transactions across. Chatrooms such as IRC also came up in the 1990s as a form of real-time instant messaging. Chat and instant messaging further evolved in the later 1990s. A free download that uses peer-to-peer communication was introduced by Microsoft but the commercial web conferencing market was only introduced in 1997. In 1999, Workstop introduced a live desktop-sharing service based on Virtual Network Computing. Bridging the gap between web conferencing and webcasting was made possible by the vendor Avacast. More vendors have entered the conferencing market since then.

Web conferencing today is expanding rapidly as it is beginning to be preferred as a mode of communication for business executives rather than emails or telephone conferences. Trying these online facilities is ideal for start ups which lacks the human resources as well as the budget for air travel.

The developments are all geared toward the benefit of the end-user. Today, two types of web conferencing and live presentations are available on the market. These are the “Enterprise” Web conferencing systems and the web conferencing systems.

The enterprise systems target large organizations who want to reduce their travel costs. But there is another blooming industry of web conferencing and online conferencing tools that target individuals.

These alternative tools provide reliable access with rock-solid reliability at a lesser cost. It has been available just recently to end-users, majority of which are small offices and individual professionals. This group of tools is also called as “SOHO,” which is an acronym for Small Office-Home Office geared towards the individual.

In summary, web conferencing has evolved into three formats namely meetings, collaborations and presentations.