The second Buyers Review live event went online last Thursday with quite a few interested buyers attending, and a large group of videoconferencing companies and industry analysts checking how their products and preferred services stack up against emerging new ones.
All of us were there to find out who really makes up this new emergent group of new cost-effective videoconferencing tools costing only a fraction of the previous generation of hardware-based videconferencing solutions.
The event covered specifically videoconferencing technologies that allowed for three or more people to communicate together while using audio and video.
Though many products claiming videoconferencing capabilities exist on the market today, only a handful actually offers reliable multi-party videoconferencing which can be carried out wit standard personal computers equipped with a commercial-grade webcam and headset.
In the first part of the event I introduced the videoconferencing technologies I had selected, and then I briefly reviewed each one of them while providing a generic screenshot of the tool interface and a ten-item scorecard that allowed to visually and numerically appraise each selected tool according to several different criteria.
The videoconferencing technologies I had selected for this event were:
1) Viditel / Wivitel
2) WaveThree Session
3) Linktivity WebDemo
4) Marratech
5) VoiceCafe VideoMaster
6) iVisit
7) eye@net
8) GRCLive
9) WebConference.com
For each one technology I personally assigned a set of values (ranging from 1 to 10) across the following criteria:
a) UI
b) Ease of use
c) Image quality
d) Performance
e) Firewall friendliness
f) Complementary features
g) Cross-platform compatibility (1=none, 3=PC&Mac 5=PC&Mac&Linux)
h) Cost/pricing
i) Trial availability
Overall Impressions
There were obviously some clear winners, but their lead was not a complete victory over the other contenders.
Actually, it would appear as if each tool had its share of shortcomings in one area or in another.
Those tools for example that had a great toolset and features may have had an approach to pricing that is not competitive anymore, while others who did have a smart and effective pricing scheme did not have the latest and better performing technology solutions others were able to offer.
The good thing is that there is indeed some good competition working out there, and that most of the products showcased offer true videoconferencing capabilities that are quite impressive in most cases.
Bandwidth Issues
True, to run 80% of these systems you need to be on a high-speed Internet connection, meaning that with less than a ADSL line it is almost certain that the experience will not be exciting. For what I have seen you need at least a full 128 Kbps line to be able to entertain any kind of basic videoconferencing among two people. Going beyond that requires more bandwidth and according to most vendors at least 256 Kbps both in downstream and upstream for multi-party videoconferencing.
Performance
Many factors influence the performance and image quality of these systems, including the compression approach utilized, the transmission protocol, the video frame rate and the size of the actual video windows. Some of these technologies allow great control over these technical variables (LinktivityWebDemo, Marratech, WaveThree Session) while others self adapt to any bandwidth encountered by changing compression codecs, and dropping selectively functions that cannot be supported at lower transmission speeds (WaveThree Session, eye@net).
Half of these videoconferencing solutions integrated a number of other conferencing, collaboration and live presentation features that made them actual full-collaboration systems and not just videoconferencing solutions. In particular, the products from WaveThree, Marratech, Linktivity, GRCLive and WebConference.com integrated an extensive number of collaboration facilities with very different levels of usability, feature sophistication and performance.
Most interesting were also those that have already embraced support for multiple operating systems and computing platforms (WaveThree Session, Marratech, WebConference.com), offering videoconferencing abilities that bridge the existing differences between PCs, Macs and Linux personal computers.
Of all the systems I selected for my review only one employed the Flash Communication Server technology that I utilize myself to provide videoconferencing abilities to my Kolabora Live! Events. I can safely anticipate that by the time we will be running this event again, there will be more solutions based on this technology, which provides great opportunity for new conferencing providers to integrate video at a cost that cannot be achieved in any other way.
Pricing
Too bad some of these videoconferencing solutions, which I have selected for being true alternatives to expensive hardware-based systems, still charge prices that can be afforded only by medium to large-size enterprises. Marratech and WaveThree for example have licensing schemes or price per user per month that would turn down most any SOHO company or professional right away. But, this is where I think the huge market really is.
Pricing schemes that provide a monthly flat rate for a maximum number of users are those that the market is expecting. In this direction GRCLive, WebConference.com and VoiceCafe offer great monthly pricing within everyones reach, ranging from $ 32.50 (VoiceCafe VideoMaster 5) to $ 69.95/month of WebConference.com. It is not secondary to mention that at this price, webConference.com throws in also a full PowerPoint presentation facility, screen sharing, remote control, whiteboard and live annotation tools, text chat and the possibility of videoconferencing simultaneously over 10 video feeds.
Winners
Overall scores for the tools reviewed ranged from a minimum of 57 to a maximum of 72 (on a 10-95 scale), with WaveThree, Marratech, Linktivity and Viditel taking the highest scores. All of them offer complementary collaboration features with at least a screen sharing/application sharing module available. Marratech and WaveThree excel for the range of collaboration features and their cross-platform support. Linktivity is extremely well equipped with additional features for recording, polling, file sharing and full event management. Viditel offers an unbeatable entry price of $ 50/user/month which for the quality being offered and the additional services remains a tough contender to beat (at least until SightSpeed and others enter this market with their own pricing).
All of the other solutions have great margins of improvement in one or more areas (VoiceCafe quality and performance of video, WebConference.com documentation, trial access (no credit card) and ease of use, iVisit documentation and customer support) with a few (iVisit, eye@net, GRCLive) just needing further interface improvements and increased ease of use before being really competitive with everyone else.
Some interesting questions from the audience
WaveThree Jim Schwarz pointed the importance of supporting open standards and creating the premises to be interoperable with other technology providers and with official standards. He stressed how critical is the ability to interact not only with different platforms but also with different technologies.
Marratech Chief Technology Officer Peter Panes intervened to point out the importance of integrating security in these evaluations. Encryption, securing transport and more.
Marratech Serge Lachapelle asked what I thought was better between hosted and server-based solution.
I promptly responded that both are valid and complementary approaches that should be seriously considered by all companies participating in this event.
Gillian Kerr of RealWorldSystems requested to know more about the presentation platform utilized to deliver this very event (iVocalize) and more specifically:
a) how to make an effective recording of the event including the imagery
b) a clarification of the VoIP differences and strengths between iVocalize and Voxwire.
To these I promptly responded by pointing out that:
a) iVocalize does provide a uniquely effective recording facility integrated in its web conferencing system. As a matter of fact many of the participants in this event selected to directly record the event by simply selecting Recording inside the File menu of the iVocalize interface.
The recording created by iVocalize is made up of two files. One, in .wma format, contains all of the audio exchanges that went on during the event, the other, a .htm file, embeds a record track of all of the URLs called up during the event and it is able to synch-up and play back the full sequence of pages presented along with the original audio presentation track.
I also pointed out that in the specific case of this event, while the recording of the first part would have included both my voice and the slides being showcased, in the section where I utilized my video solution to answer live questions from the audience the recording would have not shown any of the audio as the iVocalize recording systems tracks and records only the URLs called up and not the actual capture of the content within them.
b) In relationship to the iVocalize vs Voxwire request I once again reiterated what I have said before. Voxwire offers the best VoIP solution you can find today. It is stable, reliable and it works well on very adverse bandwidth conditions without problems. iVocalize has the same quality and similar bandwidth requirements but it does employ a different audio compression technology that is not as sophisticated and performing as Voxwire is. Therefore, if
Errata
N.B.: Unfortunately VoiceCafe pricing was erroneously reported during the live event as costing $ 162/month for a 5-user videoconferencing solution (instead of $ 32). This was an error on my part due in part also to the badly designed and confusing pricing calculator available on the VoiceCafe.com site.
I have now uploaded a corrected presentation containing all of the correct pricing and revising a couple of small errors appearing in two of the score cards.
Recording
Thanks to Voxwire, you can now view the full presentation of the nine different technologies with my live commentary here.
This is a streaming Flash presentation that can be viewed without needing to download a large file. (Flash plugin required).
The technologies reviewed in this event were:
a) Viditel / Wivitel
b) WaveThree Session
c) Marratech
d) Linktivity WebDemo
e) WebConference.com
f) GRCLive
g) VoiceCafe
h) iVisit
i) eye@net
Mentioned in this event were also a number of videoconferencing tools that allow only one-to-one videoconferencing:
SightSpeed
EyeNX
Microsoft Portrait
Eyeball Chat
Gnome Meeting (open source)
Videolink Pro
Camfrog
Squidcam
Chatstack Comstack
Virtex C3
Convoq ASAP
Among these I highlighted:
a) SightSpeed - for its existing very cost-effective high quality video service and for its upcoming multi-party solution.
b) EyeNX - for its excellent video quality.
This event was made possible by our two unique Sponsors:
http://www.ivocalize.com/
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