Microsoft acquired the developer of Live Meeting (Placeware) in 2003 and has vastly expanded its capabilities since then. It is primarily an enterprise tool, which makes sense since Microsoft does so much business with it's enterprise-scale customers. The thing is, they've priced it out of reach of the millions of other businesses that are not BMW, Proctor and Gamble or General Electric.
I've been using this tool for the past couple of weeks as part of my research in re-writing our internal quick guide for it, and I love it. It has a one-click Meet Now feature that you can trigger from Word, PowerPoint, Excel or Outlook. The Live Meeting portal works fast to set up your dashboard. And a presenter can manage an audience of virtually unlimited size - one to one million.
You can sketch out ideas on a whiteboard, show a PowerPoint presentation, jointly work in an application and share your desktop, all in a matter of seconds. Communication options include VoIP, Chat, Question and Answer panes and, of course, old fashioned tele-conferencing.
The only downside as I see it, is the price. There are several other web conferencing offerings competing for the Live Meeting space, and the next few posts here will talk about them as well.
.jpg)
