Collaborative Thinking

Thoughts On Salesforce & DimDim

Old habits die hard with this post. Real-time collaboration was one of my first research areas when I became an analyst ? specifically web conferencing tools. Last week, when Salesforce acquired DimDim, I scanned a lot of the initial reports and analysis of the deal. Assessments fell all across the board in terms of its implications ? some positive, some skeptical. However I have not yet caught an article yet that looked at the decision-criteria issues strategists will need to address. Below, I’ve outlined some of the those issues organizations should consider when this type of situation arises in the market:

Instant Messaging (IM) & Presence

Application vs. Infrastructure

 The industry views IM as an infrastructure service (rather than an application tool) and as a feature-set within a Unified Communications platform. An IM function within an application platform creates numerous overlap situations with existing IM and presence infrastructure (e.g., user experience, costs, security, help desk support, change management, development, etc). Decision-makers can allow for exceptions from IT standards (if they exist) when there is unique business value offered by an embedded IM/presence capability. However, the organization needs to realize that there is no displacement as a result ? that is ? nothing goes away with the addition of an application-specific IM/presence system.

Intranet Federation

There is no standard for how IM and presence platforms interoperate “behind the firewall”. Enterprise IM platforms do not naturally “plug and play” to exchange messages and share presence information. Integration requires vendor cooperation to deliver a supportable configuration. The implication to organizations considering an application-level IM/presence solution, is creation of a “walled garden” where users need to use two different IM/presence client experiences.

Internet Federation

There is a standard for how organizations can leverage gateways to interoperate with public IM systems (e.g., Yahoo, AOL, Google, Microsoft) and other external IM systems. Usually, organizations are looking for vendors to provide a gateway to act as a policy control and enforcement point. The reason for a gateway of some type is to apply security and compliance policies, as well as to control how the identity of internal users are represented to the outside world.

Records Management

In many situations, organizations need to monitor, log, audit, and keep for historical purposes, IM session information to satisfy communication, compliance or other regulatory policy. Often, IM/presence vendors work with third-party vendors that focus on this space to deliver an end-to-end archival and records management solution.

Application Integration

Organizations have come to expect IM/presence platforms to integrate with desktop productivity tools (office suites, e-mail clients). They also expect integration with enterprise portals. The ability to “presence enable” applications and offer a “click to IM/call/conference/etc” type capability is also a well-known requirement. UC platforms also need to offer a profile card of users that can be integrated and displayed across a variety of applications.

Web Conferencing

Many of the same collisions summarized above also occur in the area of web conferencing:

Web conferencing is considered part of a unified communications platform. Organizations likely already have a conferencing solution. Adding an additional capability that is embedded within a particular application creates overlap with existing investments (audio/video conferencing, VoIP) unless there is a compelling difference or specialized applications (e.g., e-learning/LMS integration).

Web conferencing vendors have been around for some time and many have added additional modules on top of their horizontal infrastructure to meet situational needs for sales, marketing, training, and other audiences. An application-specific solution can provide deeper integration with the processes owned by that platform but creates a tension with management desires to leverage existing infrastructure that is “good enough” for the majority of use cases.

Web conferencing vendors have had to integrate with office productivity suites, e-mail/calendaring clients and even with enterprise portals (“My Conferences”, “My Recordings” portlets). Users generally need browser and desktop integration to effectively organize and schedule meetings. Also, the ability to have pre/post workspace integration is also desirable so people can share information before and after the web conference. Application integration for campaign management or for customer service purposes can also be necessary depending on how the web conferencing system is used.

Social Tools

The newer area of opportunity for real-time collaboration is integration with social platforms. The focus of social software to-date has been mostly asynchronous (e.g., blogs, wikis, community sites). The natural progression of unified communication and social software is to converge in ways that makes sense (e.g., micro-blogging, activity streams). There are compelling hybrid use case scenarios emerging for a converged solution based on unified communications and social platforms that take advantage of mobility and social networking. However, such converged solutions do not eliminate the need for solutions to address many of the foundational issues outlined above ? especially those concerning integration, interoperability, security, and compliance. In other words, you still need a architecture that is not biased by a particular application workload or collection of workloads. A "platform" approach (cloud or on-premises or both) needs to handle a broad array of business requirements.

Summary

In summary, this event represents a classic horizontal versus vertical debate. When application platforms “own” capabilities that are considered common services (infrastructure), organizations need to identify the unique business value of those features and determine whether that value is greater than the overlap and complexity caused by adding redundant capabilities. Are those capabilities locked into the application itself, or are they going to become broadly available (and if so, is the application platform designed to do so). It is rare that something "goes away" when an application platform takes on infrastructure capabilities. In some cases, it may. In other cases, it may not. However, vendor due diligence is required and hopefully the points above will help decision makers in that regard.

 

UC And ROI: Round2: IBM's Truth And Fiction Example

John Del Pizzo from the IBM Sametime team responded to my post - but, I'm not persuaded by the counter-arguments.  

Point 1

He dinged us on:

"...the total cost of ownership is not clearly outlined, a reasonable TCO model would establish a timeline (say 3 years) and include the total costs, including various weighting factors for planning, operational support, integration costs, help desk, change management, and so on."

As I helped work up these estimates, I'll take the heat for this one. While our goal for the Lotusphere keynote was to provide concrete examples of how Sametime could pay for itself within a year, we did not set out to provide an exhaustive TCO model. We have to leave something for folks like Mike to do. :-) But... if you were at the keynote, you may have noticed that our composite Renovations, Inc example was followed by one from a German manufacturing firm. They provided data on their 3 year costs including things like education and support. Their return was 9 times costs. So, while Renovations, Inc was not a full TCO, I'd argue the composite return of 3.5 times costs was actually fairly conservative. Of course, your milage may vary and you should examine the TCO in light of your specific organization.

Round2: A fair point. The more specific example is appreciated but that doesn't really excuse IBM from portraying an incomplete / inaccurate argument. I would have preferred to eliminate the simplistic example then and stick to a testimonial that reflected a real-life situation. I think real scenarios always trump fabricated illustrations. Saving the time on the over-simplistic demo would have allotted more time to dive more deeply into an actual use-case.

Point 2

On replacing the licensing fees of a hosted web meeting service with Sametime:

I dislike this example because IBM fails to accurately portray the total cost of ownership for an on-premise implementation of Sametime vs. a SaaS solution.

To an extent, this is the same issue as above. Yes, there are costs associated with running your own infrastructure versus outsourcing it. However, the point stands that you can pay for the software licenses, hardware and a full-time administrator with what you would save by eliminating 1000 Webex Meet Me licenses - in year one. And since you don't have to "rebuy" Sametime every year - maintenance fees are only 20% of the purchase price - the savings go up dramatically in the out years. AND you get a full unified communications platform with an extensive range of capabilities above and beyond only online meetings. I'm not saying that the hosted model isn't attractive for some - just that there are scenarios where it makes more sense to own the infrastructure.

Round 2: The argument is still incomplete though - are all situations handled with only one administrator - how are complex ST implementations that require placing components of different servers handled - when is more than one admin needed and what about the other support people (help desk, system engineering, networking, server support, change management, etc? Clinging to the notion that all you have is license cost and one administrator is very simplistic. You also have costs incurred when major releases need to be evaluated and an infrastructure upgrade scheduled. I realize the sensitivity concerning WebEx since a good number of ST shops use ST for IM but other vendors for web conferencing - but we need to be a bit more accurate here.

Point 3

On using Sametime to IM enable a support site to reduce the number of calls.

This example is a stretch for me - a big stretch - most customer-facing applications on web sites that are handled by call centers do not use off-the-shelf generic IM products. They typically use real-time collaboration tools that are included within their call center suites and/or CRM applications. The reason is that call centers do a lot of multi-channel management so you do not want someone involved in an IM chat to appear available to handle a phone call or email response. You need to integrate on-hook/off-hook signaling, integrate with other customer response management tools (telephone, web, e-mail, IM, etc). IBM is correct that organizations should be looking at these tools - but incorrect that they should look at IBM and Sametime

Sorry, Mike but I have to completely disagree with you here. We specifically included this scenario because we have customers who use Sametime for exactly this purpose. How long have we been talking about the benefits seen by companies like Celina Insurance? Or a large financial services firm that is using Sametime on their loan website? In the latter case, they integrated Sametime with a partner application to route the IM to the next available agent and are evolving the implementation to connect to their telephony system to show onhook/offhook status. This way IM's wont be routed to someone already on the phone. I probably get this question once a week from our sales teams... so clearly companies are thinking about extending their web sites and call center applications with Sametime.

Round2: Sorry - you made my point. You need to add in the cost of the partner application or the customized integration into the e-Service/CRM suite that the customer is using if you want to be accurate. Implementing ST as a silo, without the integration into the multi-channel interaction management environment of large enterprise call centers is a huge oversight in the IBM argument. You need to include those costs before you can address any potential savings. And if you include those costs - how does that compare with the native real-time capabilities found in leading call center applications that address e-Service. IF those costs had been included - I'd be fine. Presenting them in a way that dodges those issues is disappointing in many ways.

Point 4

The "time saved" argument is one that has been used over and over again to justify technologies ... if you save someone 10 minutes it does not mean they will take that 10 minutes and apply it to real work. The more structured and directed the activity is (e.g., call center) the better that argument resonates. But the more discretionary the work, there a greater chance that the person will just chat with a co-worker, go grab a coffee, etc.

This is the one Mike brought up twice, so I'll address it last. (And I really got a kick out of his example of what people would do with all their new-found free time.) But... we didn't go near the productivity gain potential in the Renovations, Inc composite example. While nearly every customer I've ever spoken to has told me that the productivity gains are the reason Sametime is such an invaluable tool, the gain is usually difficult to quantify ahead of time. So for Renovations, Inc, we stuck to what could be quantified with a reasonable degree of certainty before an implementation. I'm not sure why we got two thumbs down for an argument we didn't use.
Beyond that minor detail, I'm afraid this line of reasoning wouldn't hold water for me anyway. Perhaps we should go back to using typewriters because word processors have led to too much golf? Seriously, though, IBM has documented that it closes its books 3 days faster every quarter because of Sametime. While they maybe hard to quantify beforehand, productivity gains should not be dismissed when it comes to Unified Communcations & Collaboration software.

Round2: I will match your argument with 10+ years of being in the analyst business and talking to multiple hundreds of clients that consistently point out that "time saved" is over-rated because it is often very difficult to prove real savings. Yes, you can identify time freed up - vendors are right to make that claim - they fall down on assumptions regarding how that time might be re-applied. Too many variables in some situations. For instance, in those situations where work/workers are transactional or semi-transactional (structured task workers), then you can indeed get pretty close to converting "time saved" into real efficiencies because those activities will have metrics to substantiate it. If that is the case - then you can make that point and be well-received. But once you get to what people refer to as "knowledge work" - (e.g., people re salaried, are paid regardless of time saved; or where the work/tasks have a lot of flexibility in how they get done and over what time period; or where work is not really output-driven - then the time saved argument is pretty weak. It can get a project approved - that happens a lot - but when you go back to look for the savings - it's like chasing vapor. You can be somewhat flippant in your response, but it just shows a very weak understanding on the part of IBM regarding the challenge of measuring productivity. You can go back to many industry efforts that have tried - economists and folks in the educational arena. It's a tough intangible to measure. Fortunately, IBM is not alone - Microsoft made the same grandiose claim around its OCS R2 launch. It's a very common approach - and vendors should be called on it.

The Sametime Blog

UC And ROI: IBM's Truth And Fiction Example

I caught a couple of blog posts on the IBM Keynote for UC (Lotusphere Message: Yes There Is a UC ROI) and then one on the Sametime blog (see below). A few good tips and examples but also some "buyer beware" tactics that folks should be aware of. Overall - I give IBM 3 Thumbs-Up and 5 Thumbs-Down:

The ROI of Unified Communications & Collaboration

Let's take a company - we'll call them Renovations, Inc. - with 5000 users.

On average - using suggested retail prices,  it would cost approximately $450K to purchase 5000 Sametime licenses including maintenance, two hardware servers, pay someone to plan and install the software and servers, and pay an administrator to maintain the system.

Thumbs-Down: The concern I have here is that the total cost of ownership is not clearly outlined, a reasonable TCO model would establish a timeline (say 3 years) and include the total costs, including various weighting factors for planning, operational support, integration costs, help desk, change management, and so on. IBM is being very selective (almost dismissive) of the costs to introduce, deploy, and maintain the system. 

Let's talk about the potential savings that Renovations  could realize in just one year. These figures are based on our experience from similar deployments as well as IBM's own measured cost savings. By using IM or voice chatting, we have found that users can, on average, eliminate 5 telephone calls per day. At an average rate of .02/minute and 4 minutes / call, Renovations could save $480K annually.

Thumbs-Up: It's important to note here the different between channel switching (from telephone to IM or VoIP chat) vs. time-saved by reducing phone calls. The example is correct in that there are some costs associated with telephones (and international calls as outlined below) that can be avoided if you use another communication channel. That's a real opportunity for business and IT strategists to consider.

Thumbs-Down: The "time saved" argument is one that has been used over and over again to justify technologies and for the most part - these arguments rarely deliver the level of demonstrable savings promised. Using the soft productivity argument might get the project approved - but it may not always result in benefits people can actually measure. The reason is that if you save someone 10 minutes it does not mean they will take that 10 minutes and apply it to real work. The more structured and directed the activity is (e.g., call center) the better that argument resonates. But the more discretionary the work, there a greater chance that the person will just chat with a co-worker, go grab a coffee, etc.

Anyone who travels internationally knows how expensive it is to use your hotel or mobile phone. If you spend 5 days on your international trip and make just 1 hour of calls a day, with international roaming rates, you will spend over $380 per trip on phone calls.  If instead you use Sametime to make your calls over your WiFi connection, you can avoid these international fees. In the case of our Renovations example, if only 5% of their employees make one international trip per year, that would equate to over $95K in savings a year.

Thumps-Up; Good example - there are real cost avoidance opportunities in this type of scenario.

If 1000 of the employees in Renovations  are using hosted conferencing services, like WebEx Meet Me, which charges $39/user/month, you'd be spending $470K a year. You could eliminate these recurring charges by using Sametime's emeetings…and pick up a whole lot of incremental capabilities.

Thumbs-Down: I dislike this example because IBM fails to accurately portray the total cost of ownership for an on-premise implementation of Sametime vs. a SaaS solution. So I actually would take this statement as vendor posturing.

And let's not forget that e-meetings can save you travel costs as well. We found in IBM, we spend on average around $1100 per person per business trip, which is in line with industry averages. If Renovations converted just 130 meetings during the year to online meetings, eliminating the need for an average of 3 people from traveling per meeting, they'd save over $445K annually.

Thumbs-up: Using web conferencing to reduce travel expenses is a very well-known best practice. Organizations should be looking at how they are approaching web conferencing and how that decisions aligns with where they are going with UC.

And if you operate a call center, it costs on average $10 to handle a single customer call. If Renovations cut 50 calls/day by presence and IM enabling their website, they would save up to $120K.

Thumbs-Down: This example is a stretch for me - a big stretch - most customer-facing applications on web sites that are handled by call centers do not use off-the-shelf generic IM products. They typically use real-time collaboration tools that are included within their call center suites and/or CRM applications. The reason is that call centers do a lot of multi-channel management so you do not want someone involved in an IM chat to appear available to handle a phone call or email response. You need to integrate on-hook/off-hook signaling, integrate with other customer response management tools (telephone, web, e-mail, IM, etc). IBM is correct that organizations should be looking at these tools - but incorrect that they should look at IBM and Sametime.

If you add up all these potential savings, it equates to over $1.6M in one year alone…all from an initial investment  of $450K for Sametime. ... And remember, these are undiscounted retail prices. That's 3.5X the initial investment…and the ROI just gets better and better in year 2 and beyond... And we haven't even gotten into the productivity savings.

Thumbs-Down: Productivity savings are very difficult to prove. As I mentioned up above - the more transactional and structured the work environment, then time saved arguments can actually be proven in many instances. When information/knowledge workers are involved, there's more leeway in how work is done making productivity a difficult thing to prove. We can pontificate on the productivity savings coming from UC - they make for nice project proposals. But it's very difficult to prove the "because of this, therefore that" impact on real operational savings and impacts to the bottom line.

The Sametime Blog

Web Conferencing: It's About Adoption Not Deployment

Economic conditions are driving business and IT strategists to pursue options that will reduce and/or avoid costs. Web conferencing is one of those technologies that comes to the forefront of options decision makers often consider during hard times. Having covered the topic for over a decade, I've seen use of web conferencing grow incrementally over the years and then surge forward during a time of crisis (e.g., epidemics, acts of terrorism, economic downturns). However, once things return to "normal", the increased use of web conferencing within the enterprise tends to go down - not all the way back to its original level - but use does seem to recede once the crisis has passed.

Why hasn't web conferencing taken off like e-mail and other communication and collaboration tools?

Certainly there are examples of specific applications where web conferencing has seen tremendous success: marketing webinars, virtual classrooms, and in certain custom service scenarios. But the technology is not nearly as mainstream in terms of everyday use by the vast majority of workers as email, the telephone and other tools.

If I were to layout the top technology-related issues holding back web conferencing from becoming a broad-based, everyday solution, the following come to mind:

1. Poor usability (none of these tools are a joy to use by the average person)
2. Inflexible and/or complicated licensing models  
3. Gaps in vendor capabilities - especially the level of  integration/interoperability across conferencing functions and media services (voice, video, and data)
   • Note: This item would lead to a conversation on unified communications

But technology per se if only part of the reason why web conferencing has not seen greater success. Even if we were to fix the above items, I'm not convinced it would lead to significant uptake in organizations for the the following reasons: 

1. People have pre-existing options to share information and collaborate (i.e., e-mail, face-to-face meetings, instant messaging, telephone, workspaces)
   • Web conferencing introduces another tool and another choice people need to think about
2. The positioning of web conferencing as a situational response to the crisis creates the perception that it is a temporary tactic
   • Once restrictions and policies that promoted web conferencing (e.g., travel) are relaxed, people revert to old ways of working

Changing people's behaviors and ways of working in a manner that is sustained over time brings us to the issue of "adoption vs. deployment".  Rather than stop after a web conferencing system is rolled out (as many organizations do with a variety of technologies), I would recommend some additional steps that focus on building and sustaining adoption over time:

• Make design and user experience a continuous post-deployment activity
  • Customize the web conferencing system if possible and integrate the tool within existing applications where needed
  • Observe and interview end-users on a regular basis and make adjustments to the system and supporting services (e.g., training, help desk)
• Provide guidance on how different tools best satisfy different types of work activities
  • Include examples beyond meetings and classrooms - outline where web conferencing is used "in flow" of a business activity 
  • Keep the guidelines practical so that people understand them (don't make them academic)
• Pursue options that put a "community spotlight" on new ways of working
  • Socialize how everyday work is being improved by having local advocates tell their stories in a visible manner
  • Gain management sponsorship and buy-in to the notion that employees can co-create new work models that fit enterprise needs
  • Consider supporting tools (e.g., a wiki, social network site) that allow end-users to share what works, what does not work, best practices, and gaps

DimDim: Conceptually Perfect, But Reality Is...

The challenge for DimDim is that people are moving away from stovepipe decisions for on-premises web conference tools in large organizations. Within the large enterprise and many medium size companies, decision criteria are slowly shifting towards a UC framework. That dynamic, coupled with that fact that many currently installed on-premises web conferencing systems are driven by an application need (e.g., virtual classrooom), means that DimDim needs to think ahead of the curve and not target current scenarios. What I would suggest would be to integrate DimDim with open source VoIP (i.e., Asterisk), embedding an IM/presence gateway to federate with systems (e.g., IBM, Microsoft, public networks) and integrate with a select area of vertical applications to help champions shape their business case. Strategists might be interested in a more cohesive open source platform framework that plays to a UC context than simply replacing one functional tool (web conferencing) with another. 

What about our Webex/GoToMeeting bills? No, way we need that for sales. What if we switch to DimDim, a freemium, open source-based alternative? And right there we have a nice, simple, "no duh" value proposition and one that will be popular in a recession. But, does the software work?

I got a demo last week, and the answer is sort of, mostly. What was really sweet was that there was no download required; one click from the email link and I was connected to the presenter's desktop, could see his face on a video screen, and we could voice and text chat. The "sort of" is for the few minor glitches we experienced (which Steve, the CMO, fixed on the spot) and I think it crashed Safari on me, but then lots of things seem to crash Safari these days. So DimDim is perhaps not quite ready for prime time, but it seemed very close.

DimDim’s No Duh, Recession-Proof Proposition - ReadWriteWeb

Getting Started With Web Conferencing

For those that might be new to web conferencing, there are few key items to consider before leaping to specific vendor solutions or before you go too far down the road of requirements gathering. Understanding some of these concepts below will enable you to better frame your effort and ask more specific questions re: business needs.

• Market structure
• Usage models
• Pricing models
• Convergence trends

Understand the market structure

It's important to understand some of the industry dynamics influencing how web conferencing technology is evolving. There are a variety of ways to segment players in this market. Some might even argue that web conferencing is not a distinct market structure. And I would not strongly disagree with that perspective - it's a debate on timing. As communication and collaboration services become components within a larger platform, it's difficult to see how web conferencing as something that has a distinct market boundary. However, if you are relatively new to this space and do not have a clear knowledge of its history, then some type of market / vendor segmentation can be helpful. As background, my coverage of web conferencing began in 1996. Below is one way to look at how vendors are positioned:

Conferencing Service Providers: CSP's are vendors whose business framework is premised on a SaaS delivery model where web conferencing is the primary focus. It is likely that a CSP will offer additional capabilities in terms of audio, video, integration with instant messaging systems and mobile support. Vendors in this category include: Adobe, Cisco (WebEx) Citrix, Genesys Conferencing, IBM (WebDialogs), InterCall (Raindance), and Microsoft. It is important to note that a CSP might represent one business unit for a vendor that also delivers solutions in other market segments. For instance, Adobe, Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft all deliver on-premises solutions for web conferencing in addition to a business area that behaves as a CSP.

Communication Carriers: Telecommunication companies often repackage technology from one or more CSP vendors under their own brand. The repackaging often includes a customized front-end and a unified back-end administration and billing system that integrates with what the carrier is offering to its customers as part of an overall voice/data solution. AT&T for instance is an example of a vendor that resells services from both Cisco (WebEx) and Microsoft but also sells its own solution based on its acquisition of Interwise.

Enterprise Software Vendors: On-premises web conferencing is also offered by large-scale vendors that deliver collaboration platforms. Vendors such as Adobe, IBM (Sametime), Microsoft (Office Communications Server), Novell (Sitescape), and Oracle fall into this category.

Communication & Networking Vendors: Vendors that primarily focus on telephony, audio conferencing and video conferencing also typically offer web conferencing systems as well. Vendors such as Avaya, Cisco (Latitude), Nortel and Polycom are examples of players in this category.

Specialists: There are vendors in the market that focus on specific solutions that generally fall into the web conferencing domain but might emphasize a particular function, such as screen/desktop sharing or application sharing or remote control. A vendor like Glance Networks would fall into this category. There are also best of breed vendors that (although they try to play in the general market) seem to concentrate in certain verticals. I would place a vendors such as iLinc and Elluminate in this category (I find them often used in distance learning situations). Even a large vendor can have an offshoot effort that is specialized. At this point, Microsoft with its SharedView beta is somewhat specialized (disconnected in many ways from its Live Meeting and OCS efforts).

Open Source Projects: There are also vendors that are leveraging open source efforts to deliver web conferencing technology. DimDim is an example of an open source effort for web conferencing.

Understand usage models ("use case scenarios")

Another important consideration if you need to make some decisions regarding web conferencing technology is to know about the type of applications a vendor supports. Web conferencing vendors can supply additional capabilities beyond "online meetings". Many offer conferencing-enabled applications for marketing, sales, customer service training and so on. The outline below is one way to think about the types of basic and advanced capabilities that might be needed when looking at vendors:

Online Meeting: The basic use case for web conferencing is simply to display a presentation or other type of document (e.g., project charts, spread sheets) to a remote audience. Often, the number of participants is low (less than 20) and the user experience is informal. The meeting might be scheduled or conducted on an ad-hoc basis (where the meeting space is created right away). There are a variety of features that might be needed (I'll cover those in another post) but the basics include the ability to display files in various formats (presentation, document, spread sheet, graphics, PDF), transfer files to other participants, chat with other participants, share a whiteboard, a specific applications or a desktop, and be able to conduct some type of question/answer or poll participants. 

Marketing Events: There can also be the need to have a web conference event for a larger number of participants. There may be an additional need for different roles (a moderator vs. a speaker). There may be a need to support a larger number of participants (perhaps hundreds) with a record-playback capability. The application will likely need to support some type of event management feature (registration functions) and include the ability to mute or eject participants. The web conferencing could be part of a marketing campaign of some type so there may be additional integration with other systems and the need for post-event analytics and reporting. 

Virtual Classroom: If the web conferencing system is targeted for an instructional environment, then there may be a need for integration with learning management systems or some type of course scheduling/registration application. There may need to be additional features for a student/teacher interaction model (raising a hand). The need for record-playback will likely come up as well. Integration with survey tools might also be needed if there are any type of testing requirements.

Customer Service: If the web conferencing system is intended to support a customer service scenario, there may be a greater need for remote control capabilities that allow support resources to "take over" a remote machine or the ability to co-browse (where a service agent guides another user's browser to a particular page on a web site).

Sales Support: If the solution is intended to support a sales environment, then it might be a core requirement for a web conferencing system to support features such as application sharing, whiteboard, co-browsing and a shared desktop since sales people will perhaps need more capabilities to allow them to demonstrate products and services.

Understand pricing models

Pricing models for web conferencing are more art than science. In fact, it's probably the most confusing aspect of this market (making it difficult at times to compare vendors on an equal basis).

• Subscribe "By The Minute"
• Subscribe "By The Port" (a shared resource, not named)
• Subscribe "By The Room" (a persistent space that anyone can use or attend)
• User Licensing (e.g., named users, guests, moderator-pays-attendees-free)

Since the "buyer" of web conferencing can be someone from different parts of an organization (business as well as IT), vendors have come up with different ways to purchase solutions. If they decision-maker is someone from a a communications or network background, then "by the minute" pricing is often presented since that model makes sense to someone in charge of audio/voice systems. If the decision-maker comes from an application background, a vendor might want to present a model that mimics enterprise software. You might see port pricing where you are buying some number of seats that can be used by anyone. Or, you might see something more creative where there are named users, guest accounts or even situations where only moderators and presenters pay but attendees are "free". More advanced discussions might result in a web conferencing "room" being purchased. This might reflect some type of bundled offer and might be appropriate for marketing events, sales demo spaces or a virtual classroom of some type since there is a regular schedule of sessions with a revolving audience.

Understand convergence trends

The above three concepts do not cover every aspect of "getting started" - I avoided any lengthy discussion of business requirements gathering in this particular post - but they are the some of the re-occurring issues I've come across over the years where people become confused in some way. Another future post will look at collecting requirements for web conferencing systems.

One last important item to remember is the overall trend of convergence. Web conferencing is a component of where the market is heading in terms of unified communications. It's important to keep in mind that a web conferencing decision should be made in context of other technologies that are strongly related such as:

• Instant messaging & presence
• VoIP/IP telephony
• Audio and video conferencing
• Facilities (room systems)
• Mobile
• Compliance (e.g., record/playback, audit)
• Security (e.g., SSL, AES) and identity (directory integration)
• Federation with external systems (including perimeter design)
• Application integration (e.g., e-mail and calendar systems)
• Peripherals (e.g., cameras, USB devices for phones, speakers, etc.)

Economic Concerns Will Renew Interest In Web Conferencing

Every so often, economic downturns, health-related outbreaks or acts of terrorism cause organizations to prioritize alternatives for corporate travel. Given growing energy costs and recession concerns, decision-makers are likely to "dust off" prior programs aimed at streamlining travel budgets. While there may not be as much waste in current travel programs, I suspect that we will see an upswing in web conferencing over the next several months. The leaders in the web conferencing space remains relatively unchanged. Cisco/WebEx and Microsoft Office Live Meeting are the dominant options for most large enterprises. But there are many options available. The last time I counted, there are well over 50 vendors in this space that offer hosted or on-premises solutions. There are open source alternatives as well. The hosted vendors I come across most often (in addition to Cisco and Microsoft) are:

• Adobe Acrobat Connect
• Citrix GoToMeeting
• IBM Lotus Sametime Unyte (formerly WebDialogs)

There are many others AT&T (acquired Interwise), Genesys Conferencing, InterCall (acquired Raindance), Yugma (which offers Skype integration) and so on. Some strategists may be encouraged to leverage business interest in travel-related cost reduction as justification to pursue standardization efforts (e.g., select a single vendor) or perhaps as part of a broader rationalization for an on-premises deployment (where Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft include web conferencing as a component in their respective unified communications solution). 

So pull out those old project plans ... time to update them.

Business Week: Companies curtailing travel budgets

So far, travel bookings are holding up. But corporate travel managers are taking a more active role in keeping on-the-road spending in check:

- Employees are increasingly being asked to provide an economic rationale for their trips.

- Rules that require employees to book the lowest fare, stay in pre-approved hotels or double-up in cars and rooms are being enforced more strictly.

- Executives are pushing alternatives to face-to-face meetings, including phone- and Web-conferencing.

...

Faced with rising fuel costs, airlines increased business- and first-class fares by 12.4 percent during the first half of February compared with last year, according to Sabre Travel Networks. Economy fares climbed 6.2 percent.

Airport rental-car rates have jumped at least 20 percent each week this month compared with a year ago, according to Abrams Consulting Group. And hotel room rates jumped 5.9 percent in 2007, according to Smith Travel Research.

Companies curtailing travel budgets

What WebEx Should Mean To Microsoft

When Cisco acquired WebEx it resulted in (1) direct competition with Microsoft's Office Live Meeting service and (2) opened a future new competitive battle with Microsoft's Office Live / Windows Live Spaces. While the competing web conferencing solutions are part of a broader confrontation between Microsoft and Cisco regarding unified communications, the more serious battle (in my opinion) will occur if/when Cisco can deliver a platform and ecosystem around WebEx Connect.

If Cisco can forge more partnerships like the one with Oracle (posted here), and create a WebEx Connect marketplace for additional content, collaboration and social software solutions (delivered by third parties that see Cisco as a more level playing field than Microsoft, or more reliable than Google), and add to platform Cisco's own unified communications services - then Cisco no longer will be viewed as just a networking or PBX vendor trying to dabble in adjacent markets. "IF" it can do these things (along with building out a developer story), then we could see a realignment of vendors we consider top players in the collaboration space. This evolution might take 3-5 years. But that's not all that long - it took Microsoft just about 5 years to become a credible force in the unified communications market. 

With Cisco touting its own approach to unified communications, is there a Betamax-VHS battle looming?

There's plenty of room for both Cisco and Microsoft to be very successful in this space. There will be some ways that our things can work together, because we've worked with Cisco on a lot of the network and security initiatives. But there's very direct competition here too. Cisco has offered an IP phone system for some time, and our Office Communications Server uses Internet telephony to let you track what's going on with your colleagues and makes it easy to set up a screen-to-screen-type call. Cisco acquired WebEx, and that competes directly with what we call Live Meeting, which is our screen-sharing piece that allows people to talk and work on a document at the same time. But I think we should have the advantage, because we can create the overall user experience.

And what does Mr. Gates think? - November 12, 2007

Office Live Meeting 2007: Only Large Enterprises Need Apply?

Interesting article below. I believe Microsoft is focusing more on the large enterprise with Office Live Meeting 2007 where the client can be distributed using the admin toolkit as part of normal software distribution and update processes (and maintained using the Intranet Portal). Microsoft is heavily playing the UC card by positioning Live Meeting, RoundTable and OCS as synergistic and part of a platform approach - the price to that effort of course is the uptake of Live Meeting in the consumer space and for external audiences (where large downloads as described below are intolerable for many meeting participants). Cisco/WebEx still reigns as the market leader overall - especially in the SMB space, with other vendors (e.g., Adobe, Citrix and Web Dialogs to some extent) also commonly cited during my client interactions). 

It turns out that while David Chao's article was correct about the size of the Microsoft Live Meeting client download, that is only part of the story. The Live Meeting installation information and product website recommends using the full client if possible, for complete functionality. That is indeed a 15MB download, with an installation disk space requirement of 125MB! The installation requires Microsoft Windows, as the EXE and DLL components are written only for a Windows operating system.

But there is an alternative. Live Meeting allows the use of "Meeting Web Access" (MWA), which lets you run the service from a web browser as a Java applet. The system requirements page lists supported platforms as Internet Explorer on Windows, Firefox on Windows (but only XP... not Vista!), Safari on Mac OS, and Firefox on Solaris. I called tech support and asked about Unix and Linux operating systems. The rep told me that those platforms may or may not work and they are not tested or supported. (By the way, Microsoft turned down my request for a briefing or interview, so all information here is via my own experiments, the official web pages, or tech support calls.)

The Webinar Blog: Day One With Live Meeting 2007 - Web Access Problems

Is The Future Bright For Dimdim?

The web conferencing market is an interesting space to monitor. I've covered this area since 1996. The market remains dominated by a hosted model with WebEx/Cisco and Microsoft as the top providers. Other recognized players in the hosted space include Adobe, Citrix, Genesys, Intercall (e.g., Raindance) and WebDialogs (recently acquired by IBM). Carriers often package and resell services from these vendors (note: AT&T just acquired Interwise). The on-premises market remains fragmented. There are e-learning/virtual classroom deployments (e.g., Centra, iLinc, Interwise are common) and some enterprise-wide deployments (IBM Sametime, Adobe Connect and vendors that are expanding beyond e-learning). There are at least 80 some-odd vendors in the space overall, including situational vendors that focus on specific applications - like Glance Networks, or those that extend IM/VoIP platforms like Skype (WebDialogs has been successful in that regard). There are many pricing options - some are pay-as-you-go, others are subscription-based and there are free services as well. Overall, the market is under tremendous downward pricing pessure indicating that services will get cheaper over time.

Large enterprises are not making a web conferencing decision - they are increasingly making a unified communications decision. I do not see much uptake at all actually concerning open source for web conferencing - unlike IM where I do see some deployment of Jiver and Jabber (Jabber is more open standard than open source though). So I don't see DimDim being all that successful for on-premises deployment within large enterprises. For the SMB market, hosted offerings will likely continue to dominate - there are just too many options and I doubt DimDim will get enough brand awareness and visible presence to have any significant market share anytime soon. Security and compliance demands may also come into play when organizations choose a provider.

There may be an opportunity for DimDim to be used within a package and resold (say by a carrier/telco) - perhaps there might be some interest within government sectors and emerging markets where established vendors in this space have not defined themselves. But overall, I would pass for now and revisit open source and DimDim in 18 months or so. 

Dimdim Challenges WebEx, Microsoft

Dimdim, a Burlington, MA.-based web meeting services startup, wants to take on Cisco Systems’ (CSCO) WebEx and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Placeware by emphasizing simplicity and ease of use. The company, which is backed by investors including Draper Richards, Index Ventures and Nexus Capital India, launches its service today at DEMOfall 2007. Co-founded by Computer Associates alumni DD Ganguly and Prakash Khot, Dimdim has so far raised $2.5 million.

The service allows you share your desktop and files, and to IM, talk, and broadcast using your webcam. Dimdim is using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud service to operate its service, and says its software is open source.

The service utilizes Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash 9 plugin for all of the multimedia apps. I gave the Dimdim service a brief spin and was impressed by its stripped-down simplicity and the speed with which it loaded into the browser, especially when compared to WebEx’s long startup process.

But that doesn’t mean WebEx (acquired by Cisco Systems for $3.2 billion) has anything to worry about right now, for Dimdim is still a work in progress. Its interface needs tweaking; in fact, it needs to be livened up. After all, web meetings can be fun. too. Nor was I clear as to how secure my information was going to be or where, exactly, all the files that I uploaded went. But I’m sure they will resolve all these issues soon.

This is a competitive market, and it’s going to get even more competitive. Sooner or later, Google (GOOG) is going to enter with its own twist on web conferencing, as WWD’s Anne Zelenka has pointed out. If Dimdim hopes to truly establish itself, it will have to focus relentlessly on “user experience.”

Dimdim Challenges WebEx, Microsoft ? GigaOM

DimDim launches FOSS challenge to WebEx

Open source startup DimDim has released an alpha version of their new browser based web conferencing software. Users download the open source free code and install it on their own servers. The current version supports IE on Windows only for presenters, which is really unfortunate, but attendees can be in conference via Firefox on Mac. No software download is required for attendees. Future versions will fully support Firefox on Mac, Linux and Windows. If the software ends up solid then DimDim could pose an interesting challenge to the current list of paid, hosted web conferencing solutions.

DimDim launches FOSS challenge to WebEx