PlaceWare, HP join for enhanced Virtual Classroom, web conferencing

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, Dec, 2002

The virtual classroom may never be the same. That's because of a new agreement between the collaborative web conferencing company PlaceWare, Inc. (www.placeware.com, Mountain View, CA), and HP (www.hp.com, Palo Alto, CA), developers of the Virtual classroom. The two companies have announced a wide-ranging sales, co-development, and marketing partnership. It's being built upon a long-term relationship that began when HP became one of PlaceWare's first commercial customers six years ago. Today, HP is not only a user of PlaceWare technology for its own internal web conferencing, but is also a reseller of the company's entire portfolio. The new agreement focuses on serving corporate training and web conferencing communication services to clients of both companies with enhanced products and services. The companies created a 'joint technology roadmap' this summer, and revenue for the enhanced materials will be shared.

"HP has spent more than 25 years in I/T professional training," explains Jennifer Callison, senior director of product marketing for PlaceWare. "They are the industry leader." Meanwhile, PlaceWare has experienced 700 percent growth in the past year, with more than five million hours of usage and $50 million in revenue. Industry analysts note that PlaceWare has shown great leadership in the area of live-eLearning, and say that a partnership with HP demonstrates their commitment to continued growth in this area. In addition, PlaceWare's access to HP' s worldwide professional services capabilities is expected to enhance and strengthen customers' ability to efficiently integrate eLearning into their global corporate learning environments. PlaceWare and HP will sell PlaceWare-and HP-branded Virtual Classrooms, which was developed by HP, and is based on PlaceWare technologies.

HP also will sell the HP-branded version of PlaceWare's Conference Center service to large enterprise customers through its global sales organization. If web conferencing is "the next great killer app", which Dustin Grosse, global chief marketing officer for PlaceWare insists that it is--HP is hooking up with a group that is recognized as an industry leader. Grosse estimates that the web conferencing industry will be a $7.7 billion industry by 2005, far outstripping the video conferencing market. PlaceWare works on almost any operating system, and has recently added a tiered purchasing system that allows more users to afford the service--starting with a per minute model, and moving all the way up to the Enterprise edition, which includes SSI encryption and other features.

Virtually There

The relationship with PlaceWare will allow HP to add important new features to the Virtual Classroom.

including dynamic content display, re-usable content, which allows instructors to give the same training over and over, and the ability to configure learning environments with tools and capabilities that adjust to each unique learning environment. Some of PlaceWare's more impressive web conferencing features are now being integrated into the new Virtual Classroom product. These include breakout sessions, interactive chat, online polling and 'hand raising', personal note taking on individual slides, and the ability to save slides for later use, and technology that supports live or recorded video streams from various video technologies. Sessions can even be recorded for later use.

Callison notes that the new program also includes integrated, high-quality, firewall-friendly, full-duplex VOIP (voice over IP). This allows instructors and learners to participate on a single connection, with simple user setup, reducing audio-related costs. "Reliability has been dramatically increased," Callison explains, "which has been our focus. If the call goes down for participants, if it's not reliable, it's useless." Pricing for the Place Ware Virtual Classroom begins at $100 per seat per month.

According to Callison, PlaceWare has not yet figured out the best way to move into the K-12 education space, but says it's a market that appears to have great potential going forward, as a means to help in professional development courses online, for distance education courses for students, and for online staff meetings and the like. "We are keeping an eye on it, and would love to get a better handle on how PlaceWare could work for them," she muses. She says the company already has a small but growing number of higher education clients, and thinks this might be the first path into traditional education markets.

Meanwhile, Grosse says online training appears to be doing okay in this tough economy. "There's a slow down in growth," Grosse points out, "but not a decline. It's a relative thing." Given the huge growth in web conferencing that the company has experienced, the importance of online training to this growing company is a relative thing, indeed.

Company Profile:

Company Name: PlaceWare, Inc.

Founded: 1996

Headquarters: Mountain View, CA

Primary Focus: Web conferencing

Contact: Kent Kappen, 650-526-6553, kkappen@placeware.com