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.

ANET President, Hironori Nishihata:

ANET is delighted to offer customers FRESH VOICE HD desktop video conferencing. Our video conference allows business people to hold natural conversations over video and achieve improved efficiencies with reductions in time and travel costs. We chose GIPS Video Conference Engine because of its powerful ability to manage the voice and video processing allowing ANET to present our customers with effortless video conversations that can also connect to other video conferencing systems such as Polycom, Tandberg, and Sony.

FRESH VOICE HD desktop video conferencing allows enterprises to improve productivity and offers savings of up to 40 million yen ($425,000) in costs each year.

GIPS CEO Emerick Woods:

ANET holds the biggest web conferencing market share in Japan and GIPS is thrilled to be supporting their FRESH VOICE HD desktop video conferencing. ANET is the first choice for web conferencing across numerous industries, including manufacturing, construction, IT, government agencies, hospitals and universities. With GIPS Video ConferenceEngine as its foundation, FRESH VOICE HD desktop video conferencing ensures seamless video communication for one of the most discerning audiences in the world.

GIPS Video ConferenceEngine(TM) is a software solution which enables a superior video conference experience on any IP device. GIPS engineers are world leading experts at resolving the diverse problems of IP communications such as synchronized voice and video, jitter, packet-loss and lip synchronization. Device and bandwidth constraints are also resolved providing conference providers, application developers, telecom equipment and mobile device manufacturers a faster time-to-market, minimal resource costs and a sophisticated HD video conference experience for users.

Dennerline was charged with overseeing not only Cisco’s cloud and SaaS strategies, but also its products, including the WebEx offerings. Earlier this year, Dennerline outlined Cisco’s plan of attack for cloud computing and SaaS and offered insight into how Cisco would challenge rivals like Microsoft and Google in the cloud. In his new role at Salesforce.com, Dennerline will report to Frank van Veenendaal, president of worldwide sales and chief sales officer.

Salesforce President, Frank van Veenedaal:

We welcome Doug to the Salesforce.com team; one that he is already familiar with as part of the original team at Cisco that selected our service years ago. Doug’s proven track record of sales leadership success and firsthand knowledge of the benefits of cloud computing will accelerate us in our pursuit to free businesses from the constraints of traditional software.

Dennerline, who was integral to Cisco’s cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) strategies, took the helm of WebEx shortly after Cisco acquired the video conferencing and collaboration software for $3.2 billion in May 2007. At Cisco, Dennerline served as senior vice president and general manager of the San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant’s collaboration software group and was responsible for overseeing all of Cisco’s next-generation collaboration software solutions.

During a recent demo of the Dyyno live streaming application, they both stressed the fact that Dyyno’s hybrid P2P architecture allows the company to provide reliable video streams while also keeping prices low. Dyyno can backfill these P2P streams with the help of its own servers, though at this point, the team has managed to bring the ratio between P2P traffic and streams from it’s own servers up to 98%.

Personal accounts with one channel cost $10 per month (up to 10 concurrent viewers) and the company also offers accounts for small businesses at $100 per month (with 10 channels) and an account geared towards larger enterprises at $1,000 per month (which allows for 100 channels with 1000 concurrent streams). Not-for-profits, as well as education and religious organizations can also get access to this account for $1,000 per month.

Hayes Pump CEO, Eric Zadravec:

We had been using another, well-known HD video conferencing product since 2007, but we soon realized that it had some very serious limitations. The cost of growing that room-based system was problematic, and the fact that we wanted to expand our network to support internal communications as well as external, clinched our decision to investigate other possibilities. Our existing system did not have a desktop video conferencing option, and we needed to be able to offer video communications to our remote team via their desktops and laptops; not just through a room system. After trying the Vidyo system and experiencing its ease of use and crisp HD quality, for both room and desktop video conferencing, we canceled our plans to order additional equipment from the other company.

Many companies are switching to Vidyo’s video conferencing services because of its ease of use and the versatility the service provides. The system can be used for individual use on a PC or in a full-scale telpresence conferencing room.

While Hayes is currently using the conferencing service for internal communications, it does plan to expand the reach of the technology and in the future use it to collaborate with engineering firms, customers and other partners to reduce expenses and increase productivity.

Fujitsu Voice and Data, Jim Clarke:

Videocall have given us the right blend of service and support. Videoconferencing is about an experience and ensuring that Fujitsu personnel get this experience every time is very important. To this end Videocall is a company big enough to meet our needs while remaining agile and personable in responding to our requests.

In 2003, Fujitsu integrated video conferencing into their daily business to reduce costs on travel, improve employee and customer work-life balance and also to improve their carbon footprint. Today, Fujitsu uses video conferencing services on a daily basis and has 222 systems deployed through 22 sites of the enterprise.

Videocall CEO, Rob Portwood:

Fujitsu Services is a long standing Videocall customer and over the years the relationship has developed well. With this latest upgrade to a high definition telepresence style experience Videocall look forward to being able to meet Fujitsu Services’ video communication objectives for years to come.

Polycom has introduced a solution with their new Converged Management Application that can manage an array of video conferencing systems. Polycom’s CMA can manage up to 55,000 video endpoints across a network, including Polycom equipment and any video system that uses the H.264 codec. The console is web-based, so administrators can access the system, check the status of equipment and even update firmware and software from anywhere on the netork.

Polycom Marketing Manager, Marty Sexton:

Up until now, videoconferencing has been struggling with high numbers of deployments. Key to enabling new growth is operation in a standards-based way.

The Polycom CMA can apply network polices on bandwidth and usage. You can set priority for certain employees so that they are provided more bandwidth when using conferencing services, assuring high-level meetings receive the highest transmission
quality. The system also tracks usage throughout the company, to make a case for more or less equipment based on usage.

High school students can take as much as a Semester of courses through online teaching, putting them ahead of other students and saving them money on tuition. Next year, courses will also be available to middle school students who can take high school classes to get ahead as well.

The technology is perfect for high school students who want to take physics courses although none are offered at the highschool. Such a small numbern of students wouldn’t justify starting a physics program, but video conferencing allows them to join other schools who have.

The video conferencing projects was started last year at a cost of $130,000. The initial infrastructure was paid via a federal grant, and a second grant will allow the school to offer more courses. Distance learning allows everyone to save time, money and allow students with the initiative to get ahead and be better prepared for college.

The study also found that a quarter of businesses felt that the technology was too complicated and too impersonal to create a suitable replacement for in-person meetings which they considered more productive.

Of the businesses that have already implemented the tecnology 21% felt the technology was too complicated and were switching from dedicated systems to managed services that allowed less time to organize and set up the meeting, and more time to meet.

More than 60% of the businesses felt the consideration of video conferencing was the main reason to switch to the technology. The companies also recognized the time savings when using instant meetings and appreciated the ability to schedule meetings with little notice. Finally, for 31% of European businesses surveyed, the environment was a main factor for considering the switch to online meetings.