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April 19, 2004
How Web Conferencing Companies Can Avoid Being Netscaped
For a look at where Web conferencing is going in the enterprise, its always instructive to look at Centra. Why? Theyve carved out a niche in corporate e-learning, which brings them right into the belly of the beast.
The company's new strategy shows how it intends to defend that niche against Microsoft.
Centras built its business on a very capable Web conferencing tool combined with content management and VOIP. The company recently bundled these into four Solution Areas that focus on different processes within an enterprise: rolling our applications, communicating with the channel and sales force, internal e-learning, and marketing. So whats different about the four solution areas? Each has a different collection of workflows defined through Centras experience with its big corporate customers. Each also is integrated with a few strategic applications (i.e. SAP) to make Web conferencing more easily employed in each process.
Centra shows one way how Web conferencing vendors can survive as Microsoft weaves Live Meeting (formerly PlaceWare) into every corporate desktop. Microsoft will make Live Meeting an extension of broadly used Word and Excel. Other vendors can go vertical, adding process workflows and integration to the enterprise applications like ERP, SFA, and CRM. Such specialization might just make other Web conferencing tools so effective that an enterprise can justify the added complexity of supporting more than just Live Meeting. Web conferencing vendors who cant deliver that expertise are in danger of being Netscaped. Consider that when you choose your Web conferencing technology.
Posted on April 19, 2004 at 11:31 PM
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