Who will dominate Web conferencing?

Until changes are made in pricing and systems become easier to use, no leader will emerge.

The last three years have seen enormous fallout within the dot-com market; surprisingly, Web conferencing companies have been among the survivors. The surprise is not because the application is flawed but, rather, that the market for which Web conferencing companies built their products was so distorted by dot-com thinking.

In order to survive initially, all of these companies had larger-than-life marketing budgets, launched technologies that were not quite “ready for prime time” and lacked a real understanding of what they stood for. The Web conferencing survivors have had to become focused on their target markets and to shed all forms of baggage unrelated to their primary goals.

In today’s market, that means they have to appeal to the corporate user. By and large, the survivors have designed their Web conferencing solutions to cover all of the possible needs of large corporations. The way these conferencing companies charge for usage has also been designed for corporate environments. So, did the failures of the dot-com market drive Web conferencing providers away from the real customer, the end-user? 

As an example, approach the first person you see, assuming you know him or her, and ask if that person can set up an audio conference within the next 15 minutes. The answer will be, “Of course”–and, if all else fails, they know they can call AT&T or MCI and their chances for success will be high. 

If you ask the same person or persons to set up a Web conference, your chances of success will be immediately revealed by puzzled expressions, as anyone who has tried this already knows that setting up a Web conference account generally takes several days. If you dare to involve the IT department, it may take several months. That demonstrates how immature this market still is. 

Audio conferencing today is a multibillion-dollar market. Web conferencing can still only muster up a market size of several hundred million dollars. This is not because Web conferencing is undesirable, but that users today would still rather send a PowerPoint presentation to participants by e-mail than run the gauntlet required to activate a Web conference. 
For Web conferencing to be successful:

• Anyone should be able to set up a Web conference as easily as an audio bridge; 
• Web conferences should, in an ad hoc manner, be able to be billed to credit cards; and
• Web conferencing should be so simple that no training is required.

In other words, Web conferencing has to be as intuitive as today’s audio services. In addition, the price point for Web conferencing services needs to decrease–the calls themselves are still too expensive. 

Certainly, the software may have been difficult to develop initially, and Web conferencing companies needed to make large capital investments in servers and networks, but why should the technology be any more complicated or expensive than a browser, Web server and a DNS? As soon as these companies recognize that the market price for their services cannot be sustained at current levels, and when they build business plans that price the product at a level that will meet broad market acceptance, they should be successful.

For more information from Encounter Collaborative:
www.rsleads.com/402cn-253

Ian Widger is technical advisor and board member for Encounter Collaborative, Portland, Ore.