March 13, 2006 Linux Web Conferencing: Share And Share Alike? Survival In The Blackboard Jungle By Howard Wen Courtesy of Page 4 of 5 An Academic Solution These types of problems are an especially serious concern for companies in the Web conferencing market, where reliability is usually a make-or-break issue. Of course, this is an issue that applies to other platforms as well: Glance Networks, for example, purposely does not offer a voice-chat feature, which according to Doe has proved to be an unnecessary, rarely used feature in its competitors' products. Besides eliminating a potential customer-support issue, he said, this less-is-more approach also reduces Glance's bandwidth requirements: "The greatest concern in this industry is ensuring the highest connection rate possible. So anything you can do to reduce those [bandwidth] needs increases that success rate," In the end, however, Glance's decision not to support core features such as conference hosting or desktop sharing in its Linux software is simply a matter of supply and demand. According to Doe, the company's target market segments -- online software sales, demonstrations, and training -- are even less likely than usual to create enough demand to justify a full-scale Linux development effort. Yet Doe also said that Linux-friendly Web conferencing products might generate quite a bit more interest in other market segments, such as online engineering, research, and collaborative software development. He may be right: According to Lachapelle, Marratech has found strong demand for a Web conferencing product featuring full Linux support among colleges and universities -- where, as he termed it, "geographically distributed groups with a strong need for collaborating on research projects are omnipresent." As a result of Marratech's Linux-based conference hosting and desktop sharing capabilities, he said, the company has built a strong presence in the higher education market. Indeed, despite the relatively small size of the desktop Linux market, some Web conferencing companies cite sound business reasons for providing at least some level of Linux support. "Although this market is not as large as Windows or Mac, it is one we feel is growing and needs to be supported," said Dan Richmond, CEO and founder of Internet MegaMeeting. "Whether participants are on Windows, Mac or Linux-based machines, more participants into meetings means more customers. This results in increased sales, increased customer service and increased productivity across the board." E-mail This Story Print This Story Page 5: Workspot Woes Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 Get the latest Messaging news, product info, and trends every week.			Pump Up the Online Jam Review: Office Live Beta Puts SOHOs Online Analysis: AOL Teams With WebEx For Enterprise IM Office 2007 To Feature New Workflow, Collaboration Tools Yahoo Adds Features To Firefox Toolbar Gordano Updates Messaging Suite With SNMP Links     Messaging Pipeline's Main RSS Feed     Messaging Pipeline's Blog RSS Feed Editorial and vendor perspectives The Six Flavors Of Windows Vista Microsoft plans to release a full six-pack of Vista versions, one for every taste. Which Vista will be right for you? Hope is Not Enough When It Comes To Compliance Three Ways To Authenticate E-Mail And Stop Spam Wikis In The Workplace Review: Google Desktop 3 Vendors are now talking about how collaboration can be improved by integrating video with messaging applications. They're even talking about adding live TV to mobile phones. How far do you go before it becomes a bandwidth and business productivity drain? Video is a great idea     13% Video is fine but there needs to be size limits     25% It's never used for anything really productive     38% I draw the line at live TV     25% In search of messaging products? Check out our brand new Product Finder for a directory of groupware and collaboration tools, security products, archiving solutions, and more.