Web Conference

Web- Conference Program Research

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Re: Web-Conferencing Programs Research Memo

The University of Phoenix is looking to transition into video web conferencing as a new way to host meetings for staff, vendors, classes and clients. Web-Conferencing is a 21st century technology that has the ability to be a great cost saver in terms of time, money and resources that would allow the university to extend its services dramatically across the board. Going forward the IT department will be performing testing and evaluation on three different applications that may be able to provide the university with the services that we require making this possible. During our evaluation phase, we will be looking for: applications ease of use, local and remote setup along with its maximum user connection limits and it ability to provide security along with its impact on our current network. Through our initial investigation period, we have settled on these three products: Adobe auto connect (www.adobe.com), Citrix gotomeeting (www.citrix.com) and Cisco WebEx connect (www.webex.com ). All three vendors are leaders in their industry and our final recommendation will depend on which service application will meet the university expectations.

Adobe Connect (www.adobe.com), - This application can be considered a mission critical end-to-end web-conferencing solution that can be used with a whole host of services to bring content in any situation. Adobe considers this application "the complete digital learning solution" (Adobe, 2012) and through our evaluation, the IT department has found this product to sufficiently meet our expectations and needs. During the evaluation process, we found the installation a little cumbersome. The IT department believes that minimum user training would be required for the initial setup, where a 10 point "how to guide "to assist users can be attached. The IT dept was able to create and deploy courses and content to multiple groups with little to no issues found during this process. The application provides real time meeting and training attendance reminders notices. It also comes with a set of onboard tools to assist with the management of various scheduled task. Adobe connect can provide the University with live and on demand access to meetings and classes, this is be made possible with instant access to training from virtually any device weather Smartphone, desktop, laptop or tablet. Adobe Connect makes it easy to schedule and host web-conferences that can connect up to 100 participants during any meeting using the pro version. This application uses very little overhead in terms of memory or resources, which could easily integrate into the current network setup considering the University operates over a VOIP (voice over IP) network scheme that we currently use.

Citrix Gotomeeting (www.citrix.com) prides itself as a cost effective application that provides business related services. Citrix gotomeeting web conferencing makes it possible to interface and collaborate with groups and users online by providing a set of tools that allows you to share your desktop, change presenters, transfer controls of topic, live chat,