Convergence of Web Conferencing with New Media Benefits Virtual Conferences

In the corporate sector, professional or operator assisted web conferencing services have become the norm for hosting a high profile event attended by investors, stakeholders and C-level employees. Such virtual conferencing solutions offer an environment that supports seamless collaboration and has provision for mobility. However, a new trend has emerged, wherein the operated attended web conferencing solution has been integrated with various New Media tools that promote interactivity. The collaboration solutions provided by industry leaders like Adobe, IBM, Cisco and Microsoft are among the first to evolve into more than the standard online meeting suites. This integration of the virtual workspace with additional features has not only made remote collaboration more productive but also more interactive in nature. Modern online enterprise social software tools, which include activity streams, blogs, wikis, profiles and communities, are now available in the market. These enterprise social platforms may be available in the corporate-level web conferencing solution in the future if this convergence continues. This will come as a boon for companies, which are struggling to bring together enterprise social software into the work environment, according to Gartner. Already, social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are integrated into many high end audio web video collaboration solutions. With convergence continuing at a rapid pace in the market, it may not be long before conferencing solutions come with full social media suite to enhance the levels of interactivity with other participants. It can be foreseen that companies that render customer support using a remote collaboration solution may even ask their customers to click on the Facebook button if they 'Like' the service. Corporate integration is already possible with all leading solutions, such as Arkadin Oneplace and Cisco WebEx, which work seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. Interoperability will get a boost as the level of convergence in the conferencing industry improves, since companies will focus on developing collaboration solutions that can be used in coordination with another company's product. With this in mind, it can be expected that the online meeting solutions of the future will work seamlessly with other solutions, something that is not possible in present day scenario. This means that a company can use different solutions in its individual branches as per their individual requirements and the solutions still would be compatible with each other if the personnel at the remote offices need to communicate in real time. However, it must be noted that product security will emerge as a notable concern with interoperable, converged collaboration solution. Presently, Software-as-a-Service or SaaS model is used for hosting all conferencing solutions; though it has tremendous security risks since the data being transferred among the group members may not be completely secure. In this regard, solutions will have to be modified keeping in mind data security, compliance with standards, management and ownership before being deployed at a large scale.