PowerPoint in the cloud boosts market for Brainshark

Third party app improves design and distribution of presentations

At a presentation last week in San Francisco on the many new features of Microsoft enterprise software applications, Rand Morimoto of Microsoft reseller Convergent Computing kept pointing out that this or that feature in Microsoft eliminates the need for third party apps. It got me thinking that Microsoft is kind of undercutting its third party community, unless, of course, it's licensing the technology from that third party or has already acquired the company.

To be sure, other third party application developers are likely doing a brisk business with software that builds upon the functionality of what's already in Microsoft Office 2010 or other suites. A case in point is Brainshark, a 10-year old company that's based its business model on turbo-charging Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation software. For most of those 10 years, Brainshark has enabled large enterprises to improve upon the basic PowerPoint slide one-slide two-slide three monotony by dubbing in audio narration, inserting video, distributing the presentation via e-mail, importing a Microsoft Office Live Meeting session and posting content on blogs or on social media platforms like Facebook. It also provides analytics to determine who watched the Brainshark presentation when and from where as well as how much of it they watched.

Enterprises may spend thousands of dollars up to $1 million a year on Brainshark for marketing, sales, public relations or employee training presentations, said Greg Flynn, senior vice president of products and services for the company. Brainshark recently added a Brainshark Pro offering for $10 a month that provides some advanced analytics tools and the ability to create a presentation but keep it private. It launched a free version five months ago called myBrainshark that lets people create and distribute their presentations, include polls or surveys and some ability to track usage. The free version has "thousands of users," Flynn said, including real estate agents advertising a property and job seekers marketing themselves.

New in PowerPoint 2010 is a "lightweight" version of PowerPoint that operates in the cloud, enabling some, but not all, of the editing functions of PowerPoint on the desktop. PowerPoint in the cloud makes it possible for Brainshark to expand the market appeal for its services, he said.

"The fact that companies are embracing cloud computing, that they can create these things in the cloud. You'll soon be able to import them from one cloud app to the other. Those are things that make PowerPoint 2010 significant to us," Flynn said.

Although Brainshark works with other presentation programs, including Apple's Keynote, most of the work is done in PowerPoint. As PowerPoint has become the dominant format, however, it has become the problem rather than the solution to making effective communications. The New York Times ran a story April 26 titled "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint," about how the Pentagon is deluged with PowerPoint presentations prepared for everyone from General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and President Obama.

But with additional tools to animate presentations, make them more interactive and better target their distribution, some third party providers like Brainshark have an opportunity to build a business upon a Microsoft product.

• Microsoft
• Brainshark
• Microsoft
• PowerPoint
• PowerPoint 2010