Open Source Web Conferencing -They’re Open to Conferencing

Open source web conferencing is in its early stages and some startups are still in alpha or beta but show great promise. Let’s look at a couple of these.

The first new open source Web conferencing product we’re looking at was just introduced by a reviewer online at the end of July, so it’s not even on the market yet though should be soon, possibly looking for a beta site.

The technical columnist and reviewer said that he’s been watching this startup technology open source Web conferencing firm for quite some time and was delighted to see the launch of this open source product for Web conferencing. The product, still in alpha, will be in beta in September and in full production by November. The Web conferencing vendor’s site invites potential open source clients to sign up to be part of the alpha or beta.

This reviewer was given a demonstration and said he thought the product was excellent. While he said there were some bugs to be worked through but it was designed well and performed well. This reviewer expected to cancel his firm’s account with another open source Web conferencing vendor whose system tends to crash at least once per presentation, and turn to this new vendor’s product for his conference call service provider.

The story behind this new open source Web conferencing vendor is one of a cohesive team that took an idea and made it to alpha in only a few months. A solid open source alpha product was available in six months thanks to the work of three Web conferencing savvy engineers.

These folks are open source experts, having leveraged code libraries, quartz scheduling components and packages such as Helix Streaming Server, that were prepackaged.

This open source Web conferencing application is heralded by this reviewer for a few other features as well. It is presence aware, he noted, and can integrate with all of the major instant messaging programs out there. Presence aware is a valuable new click to call or live chat tool, especially important to small businesses that aren’t always able to respond to online call or chat requests.

What presence aware does is allow the firm to remove the call or live chat invitation from visibility when no one is available to respond. A second handy feature of this new open source Web conferencing product is that it is totally transparent, allowing for client branding, offering online technical documentation and road mapping. Its Web conferencing console is Ajax-based, which means the client need add no hardware or software to run it.

This reviewer said that Web conferencing is one of the top five forms of business communication, with e-mail, browser, VoIP, and instant messaging being the other. He said he was glad that now there is an open source alternative to the proprietary Web conferencing systems, especially one that is credible and strong.