Audio and Web Conferencing
An audio and web conferencing solution can make your conferencing experience interactive and effective. For your conferencing requirements you can select either audio and web conferencing techniques separately or select an integrated solution. A number of hybrid products are also available in the market for audio and web conferencing.
Just as audio conferencing uses telephone lines to connect participants located a various physical locations, web conferencing uses web browsers and servers to conduct conferences. Web conferencing includes audio, text, web touring and whiteboarding facilities. Some companies even provide video-enabled web conferencing services. The difference between audio and web conferencing is that an audio conference only allows you to hear other participants and manage sound based conference whereas web conferencing allows you to share your documents, desktop, and applications with other participants besides optionally integrating audio with a web conference.
Meeting online through audio and web conferences is much more cost effective and easier than meeting personally for a conference. More and more companies these days are opting for audio and web conferencing solutions to meet their business requirements. This way companies can save millions of dollars by cutting down cost in their traveling expenses. People meet virtually with online audio and web conferencing. The conferencing experience becomes more enjoyable when you actually see all the participants in a conference.
Each person uses a microphone, earphone and a web cam. Utilization of maximum power of all the computers in a web-conference can be done by networking the computers. Users involved in a web-conference are technically called seats. Seats send each other any type of files, such as movies, documents, or sound files. Audio and web conferencing is simple to conduct. In order to be a part of it all you need is a computer, a web browser, a phone, and an internet connection.
Features of audio and web Conferencing
Some of the different audio and web conferencing features provided by different vendors are:
* An audio and web conferencing solution can visually indicate the entry of new participants and to indicate the participant speaking during the conference.
* Block the entry of new participants after the conference is started.
* Providing mouse and keyboard control to other participants during the conference so that they can point to your desktop and provide suggestions and make contents.
* Displaying the dial-in numbers of the participants.
* Providing recording capabilities to record the audio as well as the presentations during the conference. This feature enables participants to view the recorded conference anytime after the conference is over.
* Integration of video to give participants a live conference experience.
* Proving security through SSL (Secured Socket Layer) integration to ensure secure transfer of data among all the participants.
* Support for as many as 2000 participants.
* Operator assistance to host large scale conferences. An operator can assist by providing skilled consulting, scheduling, monitoring and reporting after the conference is over.
The selection of an audio and web conferencing solution depends on your actual conferencing requirements.