Web conferencing can be a very powerful tool for business collaboration, saving time, money and hassles when projects need to be completed yet the people involved are geographically dispersed. Until recently, though, the technology needed to enable online meetings were something only very large corporations could afford.

 

No longer.

 

Communications and online technologies developments in the past few years have greatly simplified Web conferencing—both from a deployment standpoint and a usage standpoint. While once Web conferencing was complex and expensive to set up, and required special training to use, that’s not the case anymore.

 

Quite simply, Web conferencing is simply no longer too complicated for medium or small companies. A variety of solutions are available to fit just about any budget or set of technical skills. For example, Packetel (News - Alert) offers a Web conferencing solution called Turbo Meeting that makes online meetings very easy, and very affordable, to conduct.

 

Turbo Meeting is designed for users who have basic desktop computer and Web browsing skills, but do not have the time to engage in specialty training to gain more complex knowledge in order to participate in online meetings. Packetel claims that anyone who can surf the Internet can join Web conferences conducted using Turbo Meeting.

 

Meeting participants need only a broadband Internet connection. Meetings are accessed via a Web portal. Those conducting Web conferences can get meetings up quickly with a fast client installation, with meeting admin tasks performed online through a Web portal.

 

Pactekel designed Turbo Meeting to be firewall-friendly, so no special security settings are necessary. The system comes with an interactive whiteboard and annotation functions for in-depth, efficient collaboration.

 

The pricing for Turbo Meeting is also designed for small to medium-sized businesses: $1.90 per month for 3-way conferencing and $23.40 per month for groups of up to 6 people. Packetel offers a wide range of pricing plans for other group sizes, with its most expensive package being $285 for three months, enabling conferences with up to 100 attendees. All rates include unlimited meetings within the billing period, and there are no requirements for long-term contracts.

 

Turbo Meeting features a variety of advanced multimedia collaboration tools, including: ability to share screens/desktops with participants, ad-hoc meetings using verbal invitation rather than e-mail, integration with Outlook for e-mail invitation, and real-time IM chat.

 

To learn more about Turbo Meeting and the advantages of online meetings, please visit the Web Conferencing channel on TMCnet.com, brought to you by Packetel.