VoIP (Voice over IP) is the technology that has won over the competition in video conferencing, as it allows providers to assure their clients fast and inexpensive high quality services.What VoIP video conferencing service provider to choose among the dozens that are present on the market today? Let’s have a quick glance at some of the best.
The strength of VoIP is that this technology achieves what it promises: inexpensive and spontaneous face-to-face meetings via computer screens. The prerequisites are only owning a web-camera (laptop has usually one in-built cam) and having enough bandwidth.
Among video conferencing products, some stand out because of their interesting features, easiness of use, and price effectiveness. Here comes my list.
R-HUB TurboMeeting (http://www.rhubcom.com) is a suite of virtual conferencing servers that are able to provide clients with a wide range of services that go from telepresence and HD Video conferencing to the traditional conference calls, including remote support and remote access. The remarkable features of TurboMeeting servers are security (thanks to the adoption of a technology based on on-premise servers) and ease of use, as they are real plug-and-play devices that once plugged in start working immediately. The traditional issues connected with on-premise servers (needs of IT team and dedicated cabinets/rooms) have been all brilliantly addressed by R-HUB development team who has been successful in crafting a compact, inexpensive and an all-in-one solution that covers all aspects of virtual conferencing application.
Skype is probably the most popular software for video conferencing available on the market today. The strong points are voice and video quality that combined with free service make Skype unbeaten in the segment of one-on-one conferencing. Problems rise when it is time to move to conferences with multiple participants. At that point, you’d better consider an alternative to Skype. If you desire to still stay on the ground of free conferencing apps, you could consider Oovoo, a service that allows conferences up to six participants and has the intriguing feature of communicating though video mails. In comparison with Skype, outages are less frequent, as Oovoo runs its own servers.
Hosted applications do not require clients to download and install any software, which is a great advantage especially when using mobiles. They are also easy-to-access and easy-to-use, not to mention that they can be easily integrated with most operative systems. These are the reasons why they are increasingly popular. Among hosted solutions for video conferencing, we find WebEx Meeting Center and SightSpeed. Both offer many useful and interactive tools to involve participants (like file sharing). Naturally, quality does not come for free. It is necessary to pay a monthly fee to use these services.
Last but not least, we have two top quality solutions, Adobe Acrobat Connect and AT&T Connect. The first is a powerful web conferencing service that supports conferences up to 2500 participants; the latter is a high flexible and versatile product that hosts conferences with an unlimited number of participants. Unfortunately they are both quite expensive, especially when compared with free software, which makes them unsuitable for small organizations.