Who played, who didn't

The Web conferencing industry is crowded. More than 40 companies offer services for business users. We expect that there will continue to be consolidation in the industry in coming months and years.

To focus on the features we believe are most valuable for collaborative teams, we stipulated strict criteria for inclusion (we required that the service must have at least one real-time media, voice or video over IP, integrated with the full Web conferencing application). We extended invitations to 20 vendors: Centra, Cisco, Citrix, Convoq, Elluminate, Face-to-Face Meeting, Genesys, IBM, Interwise, Linktivity, Macromedia, Microsoft, NetSpoke, Pixon, Raindance, Viack, Santa Cruz Networks, Wave 3 Software, WebEx Communications and WiredRed. Fourteen companies responded favorably to the initial invitation, and the 11 finalists (see main story ) met our criteria for the tests.

Cisco and IBM said while their service platforms met the original criteria, their business model is to host a dedicated server on behalf of a corporate customer. Microsoft Live Meeting declined because it said that its target customers are customers with very large events, although the company expects to release companion services for collaborative teams in the near future.

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The Web conferencing industry is crowded. More than 40 companies offer services for business users. We expect that there will continue to be consolidation in the industry in coming months and years.

To focus on the features we believe are most valuable for collaborative teams, we stipulated strict criteria for inclusion (we required that the service must have at least one real-time media, voice or video over IP, integrated with the full Web conferencing application). We extended invitations to 20 vendors: Centra, Cisco, Citrix, Convoq, Elluminate, Face-to-Face Meeting, Genesys, IBM, Interwise, Linktivity, Macromedia, Microsoft, NetSpoke, Pixon, Raindance, Viack, Santa Cruz Networks, Wave 3 Software, WebEx Communications and WiredRed. Fourteen companies responded favorably to the initial invitation, and the 11 finalists (see main story ) met our criteria for the tests.

Cisco and IBM said while their service platforms met the original criteria, their business model is to host a dedicated server on behalf of a corporate customer. Microsoft Live Meeting declined because it said that its target customers are customers with very large events, although the company expects to release companion services for collaborative teams in the near future.

Wave 3 Software's service was unavailable because of technical difficulties, preventing test team member access during the testing period, and therefore was not studied. Citrix didn't complete the testing because the service doesn't have real-time media fully integrated into the platform as we had originally understood.

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