In brief: Pixion delivers OS X conferencing

Plus: Pedestal updates real-time server monitoring.

Pixion announced last week that it would bring its Web conferencing server PictureTalk 4.0 to the Macintosh OS X platform, giving customers the option of installing on Windows, Solaris and Macintosh. PictureTalk 4.0, offered as a hosted application or available for installation on the customer premises, is a Web conferencing-only product that competes with PlaceWare and WebEx.

The software lets a presenter share slides, documents and views of nearly any application via a native PictureTalk client. Meeting attendees participate with a locally installed client or via a Java applet. Customers provide their own telephone conferencing or can use a built-in, proprietary voice-over-IP option for communicating with attendees of the conference. PictureTalk also includes text chat, whiteboard, annotation and polling functionality.

The server can be integrated with Simple Mail Transfer Protocol e-mail servers and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol directories. The Mac OS X version of PictureTalk 4.0 will be available in August. For customers that want to host the product, pricing starts at $6,625 for a 10-concurrent-user license.

Pedestal Software announced an updated version of its Intact server software for real-time monitoring of operating systems, applications and files for Windows NT/2000, Linux, AIX and Solaris, adding an auto-configuration wizard that makes it easier to install because of an option for making use of pre-determined software configurations.

Intact 3.5 costs $445 per server.