Conferencing: boardrooms to classrooms: the laptop-and-lunchbox generation learns that knowledge is the future's new commodity - Telephony/CTI

Communications News, August, 2002

Often ballyhooed strictly as an alternative to business travel, conferencing is, quite simply, convenient collaboration among people. Through conference calls, forums, instant messages, newsgroups, bulletin boards, e-mail, notes, videoconferences and any number of other appellations for sharing information, students and teachers, researchers and scientists, and global businesses stay connected. The level at which these diversified users wish to collaborate, however, demands varying degrees of complexity and of quality.

Introduced within the past five years, for example, on-demand teleconferencing software means ports no longer need to be reserved. The improved reservationless model furnishes flexibility--and soon, true instant conferencing, using new IP architecture, will incorporate PSTN, IP or wireless devices. Analyst Andrew Davis, managing partner at Wainhouse Research, notes, "We expect the the market for such services to grow from billion in the year 2000 to almost $10 billion by 2006."

The Web-conferencing niche generated revenues of $266 million last year-and projected to surge to more than $2 billion in the next six, according to Frost & Sullivan.

Those "ivy-covered walls" are being re-landscaped via the Web. Distance learning encourages students everywhere to carry a laptop with their lunchbox. Virtual classrooms expose students to to collaboration among their distant peers. Distance teaching re-styled the concept of tenure into virtual tutelage, with fewer numbers of professor, each able to teach expanding numbers of students at once.

For organizations small, midsize and large, technology prompts many questions--among them, what benefits derive from such an investment? Global 2000 companies discovered they work better, resulting in faster business decisions, shorter selling cycles, enhanced communication and costs.

CONFERENCING: A DIRTY WORD?

According to Marty Hollander, vice president of marketing for Latitude Communications in Santa Clara, CA, "Business people want to train, manage projects, obtain staff updates, hold sales calls and conduct virtual meetings that are just as effective as in-person ones.

"People need to pass notes, see who is speaking, view and edit documents, get a `show of hands,' step out for private talks, and other natural components of meetings," he observes. "Meetings must be simple to schedule, reschedule and attend, without the need for multiple reservation numbers, passwords and ID numbers."

Latitude's MeetingPlace supplies a single, fully integrated voice and Web conferencing environment to other organizations. When Century 21 real estate recently overhauled its policies, Kathy O'Shauhnessy needed to train 4,000 franchisees nationwide. To travel to each would have taken years. She completed the training in six months with the technology she already used for staff meetings, project management and investor calls, saving Century 21 more than $2 million to date.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad requires lightening-fast communication, and uses the solution's IP telephony capabilities for safe, efficient scheduling of tracks. An open meeting is always on in case of emergencies requiring trains to be rerouted or canceled. Railroad teams can gather for immediate meetings to handle crises, with other team members able to be conferenced in even on their cell phones or personal digital assistants.

In Alaska, legislative sessions must be open and accessible to the public, but realistically, how can the scattered residents of the vast state travel across ice fields, around glaciers and through snow banks to attend? With conferencing technology, residents call one of 22 remote legislative information offices for immediate entry to visit sessions, and the state records and archives sessions for later review.

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BRIDGE TRAINING DISTANCES

"Web conferencing offers a wide-range of services that fit any meeting's demands," says Ted Schrafft, president of Premiere Conferencing in Lenexa, KS, which produces five conferencing solutions, including VisionCast, ReadyCast and SoundCast. "Training content can be delivered and demonstrated interactively, allowing participants to ask questions over the telephone, or through electronic question-and-answer or chat features. Presenters can poll the audience to gauge interest in the content, and collaboratively share documents to explain points more thoroughly. Participating employees' simple requirements are access to a PC, the Internet and/or a phone line."

"Before Web conferencing, our in-person training sessions were difficult because our employees are located around the world in different time zones," says Jeff Klein, IT manager for Sorrento Networks, a metro optical networking company located in San Diego. "Web conferences allow us to regularly conduct training sessions without the extensive time-consuming coordination and travel. Premiere's collaborative features allow our employees to function as if they are located in the same room.