Frost & Sullivan analyst, Roopam Jain:

Citrix Online is the growth leader in the Web conferencing industry due to the simplicity and cost-efficiency of its solutions: “Citrix Online is the fastest growing company among top Web conferencing SaaS providers, far surpassing the industry average of 17 percent. GoToWebinar has set the standard for ease-of-use in the Web events space. The company’s focus on simplicity and competitive pricing, along with the recent addition of free VOIP capabilities, has strengthened its value proposition and helped propel Citrix Online to a top three revenue position in the global Web conferencing SaaS market.”

Citrix Online was positioned in the Leaders quadrant in Gartner’s new 2009 Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing study. According to Gartner, “Vendors in the Leaders quadrant have achieved significant market share while demonstrating their ability to respond to customers’ needs. Leaders have robust, scalable products with a wide range of features, a large installed base, acceptable financial performance and good distribution. Leaders do well today and are prepared for the future.
Citrix General Manager, Brett Caine:

Recognition from prominent analysts for our leadership underscores the power of simplicity for driving universal adoption of web conferencing services. Businesses of any size – from individual consultants to the largest enterprises – are making a clear statement about the importance of simple-to-use, yet comprehensive offerings for addressing their business challenges in new and cost effective ways. This model is fundamental to our market approach and will position both our customers and Citrix Online for continued leadership ahead.

The interface is now easier and faster, and users can upload simultaneous files allowing them to have their files ready to share more quickly. The updates also include a feature that allow attendees of the web conference to alert the presenter, should they have a question or there be a problem with the presentation.

Global Conference Partners CEO, Ken Ford:

 Our goal is to provide our customers with options to fit their conferencing needs. He said that the new enhanced conferencing tool, SharePlus, is “better than ever.”

SharePlus is now out of beta and is available for purchase. SharePlus is just one of a number of online collaboration tools offered by FreeConference that can be purchased individually and used together with other services provided by the company. It remains to be seen though if the service that was up until no free, will be able to draw enough clients to make the business model viable, particularly in the current economic climate.

InterCall President, Scott Etzler:

InterCall Unified Meeting gives InterCall customers a new way to increase productivity and collaboration wherever they are. The ‘click -to -start’ feature makes access straightforward and gets people collaborating in a quicker, simpler way, making InterCall Unified Meeting great for seasoned conferencing pros and novices alike.

Using the Unified Meeting application, does not require any download and is cross-platform compatible like most web conferencing solutions are today. The focus of the product is to be inexpensive and a quick way to get people communicating for projects, processes and sales meetings.

Unified Meeting has been developed as a result of InterCall acquiring Genesys Conferencing. Only a few months after the acquisition, InterCall was able to integrate the proprietary web conferencing system of Genesys into their conferencing framework.

The advent of InterCall Unified Meeting demonstrates InterCall’s commitment to Unified Communications and solidifies our pursuit of UC offerings our customers care about in the future. Validating InterCall’s plans, the company was recently recognized by Frost & Sullivan with the group’s 2008 North American Award for Customer Value Enhancement for expanding its conferencing and collaboration offerings and integrating new technologies that broaden the Unified Communications portfolio.

Other trends that have boosted the usage of video conferencing include the globalization of so many different markets that now have clients, suppliers, vendors and partners all across the globe. Where vendors used to have to fly from Europe to Asia to pitch their latest product lineup, they can now fire up a video or web conferencing session for a fraction of the time and cost that conventional travel took. Another driver for many industries is that video conferencing supports “going green” initiatives and reduces the companies total carbon footprint.

In a recent Wainhouse Research survey of 247 video conferencing users, two of the greatest drivers of visual collaboration and communications solutions were improved decision making and reduced travel. The survey, indicated that almost a quarter of the respondents either currently use or plan to start using telepresence in 2009.

Companies like Polycom, Cisco, InstantPresenter, LifeSize, Tandberg, Vidyo, and others are all benefiting from the growing interest in video communications technologies as the industry continues to grow, the technology becomes both more affordable itself, and video conferencing becomes an attractive alternative to conventional travel in a declining economy with rising travel costs.

2. Increase the speed that you complete projects. Lots of projects get stalled when individual and teams are waiting for the next meeting to check the status of everyone else’s components. With video conferencing, you can instantly connect and collaborate with everyone involved in the project, saving time and speeding up the process.

3. Share news more quickly. Webinars and web conferencing allow companies to quickly share news, train employees and inform their customers of new products and offerings. Instead of an annual conference, or expo, you can release and promote new product lines with very little cost involved.

4. Close deals faster. Video conferences are typically more productive than physical meetings. There is less chit-chat and non-essential cross-talk and the meeting ususally gets down to business right away. Managers are usually less likely to miss video conferences since they don’t have to leave their office and can fit it into their busy schedule.

5. Improve IT support. Web conferencing services allow IT to quickly diagnose and repair many computer related problems. Many web conferencing software packages allow a remote technician to take control of a computer to quickly go through the repair process. This is usually much less time consuming than trying to get an end user to follow steps blindly.

Stream57 president, Ben Chodor:

I’ve been looking forward to this feature, and I can proudly say we nailed it. Offering a truly revolutionary capability like multi-video affirms our position as the ultimate custom-development webcasting company. Anticipating and preempting the demands of the industry as a whole is just one of the reasons why Stream57 is driving the future of streaming media.

Multi-video support, to be officially released with the launch of the StreamLine 2.9 webcasting software platform, will be rolled out through select presentations in the coming weeks. Look for upcoming demonstrations, examples and many multi-video webcasts in the coming weeks.

Multi-video webcasting technology is a perfect balance between standard video conferencing solutions and much more expensive and stationary telepresence systems. The ability for multiple presenters to contribute to a web conference makes this technology much more useful as a conferenece and collaboration tool.

Telepresence solutions strive to make online meetings as realistic as possible. Desks, monitors, and directional microphones and speakers make it seem that you are actually talking directly to a person instead of blankly looking at a camera. While this solution might be the most comfortable and “futuristic” way to communicate, it’s expensive and not necessarily the most productive.

Traditional video conferencing, offered in a wide variety of flavors, is a much more cost effective solution with additional features to enhance collaboration. Whiteboarding, discrete messaging, file sharing and other features allow you to not only see the person you’re communicating with, but collaborate with them on projects simultaneously.

While telepresence may replace board meetings with disparate board members and company officers, as a stand alone technology in a tightening economy it seems inefficient. I think that eventually, telepresence and typical video conferencing systems will merge into a single type of collaboration communication as technology and adoption of the services increase. For now, video conferencing services like InstantPresenter that offer full video conferencing, web conferencing and webinar services at a fraction of the cost of telepresence seems like a much more efficient solution for your business.

Cisco Vice President, Bert vanderZwan

As we expand our international footprint it’s important for us to meet internationally accepted standards in addition to US requirements. These updates to our infrastructure demonstrate our commitment to ensuring that our customers’ meetings are the most secure in the industry.

Cisco WebEx is also actively pursuing ISO-27001 certification, as recently made available by the ISO board. In addition, it reviews against DIACAP (Department of Defense Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process) and FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act) requirements, and submits source code for all major product releases to third-party reviewers, with results made available in an independent security report.

The price increases will be effective at the beginning of September and will apply to all authorized distributors of Citrix software. Distributors set up their own end-user pricing models, so they will be able to increase their prices accordingly.

Citrix Spokeswoman:

Citrix resellers determine the price at which they sell to their customers based on their purchase price from distributors, their business model and the overall scope of each solution.”

Currently, all of Citrix’s pricing models are based on the US dollar. The dollar, having steadily declined in value against the Euro and British pound, has increased operating costs for the company, which are being passed down to the end user. The US dollar experienced a sudden surge last week against both currencies, but overall remains much weaker than it has in the past.

The increase is a result of the rising costs of doing business globally, based upon the inflation of various currencies in comparison to the U.S. dollar, upon which Citrix pricing is based.

The price increase comes at a time when technology spending is expected to slow, amid fears of a slowing world and US economy.

Avistar General Manager, Darren Innes:

CityIS is a significant player in our strategy to deliver our C3 solutions through the reseller channel. CityIS has more than a decade of specialized experience in the videoconferencing space, and knows first-hand what its clients need to remain competitive in today’s challenging global marketplace. With offices around the world servicing global clients, CityIS offers a breadth and depth of channel coverage that will be instrumental in our goal of making Avistar desktop videoconferencing services as ubiquitous as large room implementations.

CityIS Chairman, John Thompson:

More and more, our clients see the value of videoconferencing as a means to boost workplace efficiency, optimize supply chain operations, accelerate decision-making and reduce carbon emissions. This agreement allows us to complement our extensive videoconferencing offerings with an easy-to-use, intuitive desktop solution that maximizes the productivity of users and does not disrupt the work flow they have underway at their desks.

Wainhouse Research Senior Analyst, Ira Weinstein:

Today’s challenging economic climate has spawned increased interest in both group and desktop/personal videoconferencing. CityIS’ experience selling and supporting professional videoconferencing solutions makes them well suited to offer Avistar’s C3 integrated desktop conferencing solution to its roster of enterprise clients.

As the boom in videoconferencing services increase, many web conferencing and video conferencing companies are creating strategic partnerships with similar firms to increase their offerings to their clients at prices that reflect the economies of scale. Webconferencing companies such as Webex are able to offer services at far lower prices and strategic parterships among smaller corporations allow them to stay competitive.