The past Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday I attended my first Canadian Telecom Summit – where Canadian telecom carrier and vendor executives have an opportunity to provide an overview of their goals and directions encompassing both recent accomplishments and future plans. Overall many of the speakers succeeded; however, there are still a few telecom executives who want to preach motherhood. The audience comprised a mix of participants in the Canadian telecom ecosystem including both national  and  independent carrier management personnel, telecom business consultants, regulatory body staff, financial analysts and service providers amongst others.

Some highlights:

Building out a national broadband infrastructure (wireless and wireline). While the country can be considered “covered” with broadband and 3G wireless access, there are a multitude of private companies who have invested several billion dollars to build this infrastructure. Bell Canada, Rogers, Telus and MTS Allstream are the major carrier players but there are several regional or local private operations providing backbone to vertical or regional markets, (Atria Networks, Hydro One Telecom and Internetworking-Atlantic are some examples.)

But doing the interconnect between these players, especially at the wholesale/retail interface, is governed by CRTC regulation. A “regulatory blockbuster” forum, encompassing the heads of government relations for four major carriers and a public policy advocate, brought out several of the issues and conflicts from the participants’ perspective. Multi-billions of dollars are being spent this year to build out fiber and wireless infrastructure. Shareholders want to see return on investment; business and consumer customers simply want value for their charges independent of how the connection is routed. CRTC personnel were in the audience but there was no indication as to whether they heard anything new.

Customer Expectations: Simply put, several of the presenters focused on the customer as the primary consideration and marketing target when it comes to developing services. Lots of talk about how the user experience is changing and will change with the range of new services available via mobile data/Internet. However, execution is the challenge.

From comments by various Rogers personnel related to Net Neutrality (separate post) through to the demonstration of user-friendly interfaces that aggregate local and cloud-based personalization of a mobile device the conference covered a range of end user issues. Both the Palm Pre and Comverse demonstrations provided specific examples of how such aggregation can work to the user’s benefit. Microsoft’s “Surface” table demonstration was pretty amazing but it can only become a consumer experience with a significant price drop from the stated $12,000.

It’s about bringing broadband speeds to mobile services: One common theme across most of the presentations was the exponential growth of user demand for mobile services across the data networks. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazardis used physics as the basis of his talk about the future need for more wireless data network capacity through not only additional spectrum but also scalable applications and, based on an inherent strength of BlackBerry devices since their introduction ten years ago, effective wireless data compression to reduce bandwidth demand.

Rogers Chief Strategy Officer Mike Lee pointed out that current investment in wireless and fiber infrastructure dwarfs all other investment in Canadian ICT combined. Four outcomes that I have experienced this year as a result of these investments: launch of their 7.2 Mbps HSPA wireless service reaching 75% of the Canadian population; fiber-to-the-node installed to my neighborhood cable head, 3G service to two central Canada resort areas which I frequent and, most importantly, a robust, stable 3G service compared to my AT&T 3G roaming experience.

The disconnect: However, I also felt a major disconnect with the emerging communications opportunities being discussed at conferences such as Lee Dryburgh’s eComm Conferences and Jeff Pulver’s recently launched HD Communications Summit. Innovative applications, communications enhanced business processes and the productivity benefits of HD Voice were amongst the subjects NOT discussed at Canadian Telecom Summit. Innovative yet profitably successful services such as Voxeo and Jaduka ride over the carrier networks. Yet the Canadian Telecom Summit was an opportunity missed; it had the audience that needs to hear these stories and to build awareness of the services required to facilitate sustainable revenue streams at the carrier level.

Friend Thomas Howe, CEO of Jaduka and more commonly known as Mr. Mashup, puts it succinctly in a recent post, The Sophomore Slump, concludes with:

My suggestion is simple: instead of putting out another solo album, today’s operators need to team up with other musicians. They need push out of their current ecosystem and into others, showing how voice and communications can make other applications better.

…….

The challenge? Operators need to step back from the spotlight, and give somebody else a turn at the microphone. Operators need to admit that they are not expert at anything other than real time communication. The most rational path is for the carriers to partner with others companies that bring other talents and values to the table, [rather] than to use what operators do best to extend their partner’s offerings.

Bottom line: Canada continues to lead the world in delivering communications over a large geography but with relatively small pockets of population. But, instead of hearing oft-stated platitudes about the need for increased business communications, let’s hear about specific examples where enhanced communications applications and services can deliver true productivity enhancements to the both enterprise operations and the end user while bringing significant benefits to our social communications.

Suggested reading: Thomas Howe’s various posts on The Jaduka Exchange – a primer on new telecom services in action. Especially relevant: Unified Communications? No, CEBP.

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• Bell, MTS at odds in separate appeals of CRTC rulings (cbc.ca)
• Rogers defends wireless pricing (thestar.com)

Legion are the stories of small and medium businesses who are using Skype for their worldwide communications operations.

• Skype is the cornerstone for keeping Toronto-based  b5media’s worldwide staff of bloggers, editors, developers and executives in touch via both informal and formal conversations.
• SeeWorthy gets an assist from Skype when communicating with their Taiwanese supplier (via an Alberta-based translator), North American and Caribbean agents, and prospective European distributors as well as their customers.
• A Canadian-headquartered resource company is using Skype voice and IM for communications with their operations in Asia; their biggest challenge involves time-zone issues. Skype chat’s inherent asynchronous nature helps to address that issue.

Skype itself claims that about 30% of all its user activity is business related. I often encounter small businesses who have a wealth of stories about how Skype contributes to their business success.

But during a recent conversation with OnState CEO Pat Kelly I learned about how Skype is stealthing its way into medium to large enterprises. Pat discussed two examples (who will remain generic until case studies are available):

• OnState received an enquiry from a major North American parts distributor whose operations involve agents, resellers and business customers spread out across North America. While this company has an internal IT team, the CFO was focused on significant cost reductions for their call center operations. He has now contracted OnState to provide voice, chat and other customer relationship communications activities that do not simply save money but provide additional communications processes such as IM with its inherent presence and chat features. Once the contract was signed, the CFO mentioned he would guide his IT personnel with their role in the implementation.
• A European country manager for a worldwide, US-headquartered business found that he was getting charge-backs for “corporate” communications services that did not meet his particular needs. He had enough autonomy that he investigated OnState’s services, went through not only the technical specifications but also the legal reviews and business process requirements. He is now meeting the communications needs of his business ecosystem using Skype and OnState’s other auxiliary services for call center and virtual PBX requirements. Subsequently other European subsidiaries of the same company are implementing OnState’s services. Yet this is a situation where the U.S. head office has yet to be contacted about what additional opportunities for Skype and OnState may exist within their business.

Pat’s key point is that, in today’s economically stressed environments, there’s a trend where CFO’s and business unit managers are making the key communications services decisions in larger enterprises in order to meet their financial goals. IT personnel are playing little or no role in the decision making although they may be involved to a limited degree in the implementation. What are Pat’s key observations?

• The consumer experience with Skype is stealthing its way into business implementations, not only with prosumers and small businesses but also at the business unit level within larger enterprises.
• Why? Skype just plain works. There are no firewall issues; OnState’s SaaS model eliminates capital investment for PBX’s and related infrastructure.
• It’s relatively easy to implement.
• Economic pressures are driving adoption.
• Where a business partner or customer has Skype also, HD Voice, incorporating SILK, provide for more productive voice conversations.
• It’s not simply about using a technical mashup across multiple services (Skype, Google, and Voxbone, for example) involved in OnState implementations; it’s a “business mashup” involving business processes and employee acceptance.

It’s a repeat of a trend that drove personal computers into larger enterprises twenty-five years ago. I recall one story where a Canadian bank Vice President found an employee with a PC that had a modem attached (with, at best, a 1200 kbps speed). The modem was ordered disconnected! Bank security was going to be upheld despite technology progress. Four years later that same bank ordered over 10,000 PC cards from my employer of the day for inclusion in their new, at the time, teller terminal system.

Bottom Line: Even if it’s not totally free it’s the raw cost savings that are driving Skype adoption, sometimes in co-operation with their business software partners. It’s about not only lower calling costs but also the elimination of capital asset costs. For some business markets Skype is stealthing its way into business communications infrastructure.

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• OnState Upgrades On Demand Call Center and Virtual PBX (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype Modifies Fair Usage Policy (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Business Long Distance: Death by 1,000,000 PBX’s (voiceontheweb.biz)

Over the past three days there has been a continuous stream of presentations that provide insight into a wide range of issues, opportunities and perspectives in the IP-based communications space going forward. While there will be more posts covering individual presentations, it’s worth taking time to mention a few highlights:

• Most innovative, outside-the-box, presentation: Ge Wang of SMULE (Sonic Mule) and his presentation including recordings of the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO). Become your own iPhone musician by breathing gently into the iPhone’s mic using their Ocarina iPhone application (warning: small fee $0.99).
• Most outstanding announcements: three offerings that open up new user experience opportunities in a Voice 2.0 world (Yes, I already blogged about these but they still stand out as winners for both the service providers and end users.)
  • Voxeo: Tropo.com opens up the Voxeo platform,  previously limited to the small population of voice developers, to hundreds of thousands of web developers.
  • Skype: making the superwideband SILK codec available royalty-free to any relevant hardware or software vendor that wants to bring new user experiences to voice calling.
  • Jaduka: the appointment of Thomas Howe as CEO will accelerate the adoption of voice into existing business processes, eliminating the error-prone mundane while opening up new standards for applications such as healthcare procedures, customer satisfaction and service deployment.
• Other presentations of note:
  • Martin Geddes, Head of Strategy, BT: there is value in addressing issues of efficiency and effectiveness inherent to business processes. Martin proposes that the key business model is to satisfy the needs of parties who want to interact with customers; for instance, improve the productivity of call center employees
  • Shai Berger, Fonolo, whose deep dialing service has now mapped out the IVR trees of over 500 companies and presents new opportunities for customer service operations.
  • Mobivox, expanding their voice-activated mobile services platform with their CRM for Voice business tools.
  • iNum, announcing support for IM and presence, initially with Google Talk
  • Alan Duric continues to see ongoing profitability and success at Norwegian service provider Telio. Why? a continuous stream of innovation and new value-added services.
• Some themes and issues across multiple presentations:
  • Spectrum 2.0: several presentations and a panel covering issues related to (the lack of) spectrum management and “white space”. In major markets over 90% of available spectrum remains unutilized.
  • Regulatory issues: the challenge of creating and executing a user-oriented regulatory framework under “the first technology administration”. Network neutrality: is it more a “buzz phrase” than a real issue? Seeding the policy makers with players who understand regulatory issues from both an innovation and business opportunity orientation as opposed to supporting monopolies or duopolies. Aligning regulation with the application potential of emerging communications technology.
  • API’s: several presentations from vendors who provide free API’s that support third party developers in writing applications that are then hosted by the vendor: IfByPhone, Voxeo, Jaduka, Ribbit, Adhearsion (whose Jay Phillips, right, provided a tutorial incorporating programming to Skype for Asterisk),

One note: there were a lot of innovators and forward thinking people amongst both the speakers and the audience. Most interesting was that there were at least six attendees from carriers who were asking the questions about how carriers can adapt to this emerging communications world: SaskTel (2), T-Mobile US, Rogers, NTT. eComm’s biggest challenge for next year will be to attract a larger audience of carrier personnel. In personal conversations I learned a lot about their issues that may work its way into future commentary.

Overall, eComm 2009 once again provided a primer in a wide range of aspects of the emerging communications space. With Thomas Howe leading Jaduka’s CEBP charge into larger enterprises, Voxeo addressing a huge community of web developers, Skype offering new levels of call quality to the entire communications hardware and software community, Fonolo solving that PITA known as punching your way through company IVR systems and Calliflower offering new user experiences in conference calls, the next few months will prove most interesting. Most challenging to observe will be how these technologies and services assist business and personal issues in times of a most challenging overall economy.

Timothy Hay, Wall Street Journal wrote up Jon Arnold’s panel on “New Ways to Monetize Voice” : VoIP Start-Ups Scramble To Find Niche (subscription may be required)

Alec Saunders: eComm – strong stuff

Thomas Howe has long been noted for his expertise in developing “Communications Enhanced Business Processes” (“CEBP”). Fundamentally this involves embedding communications facilitation into a legacy business process such as to reduce operating overheads and/or increase employee productivity. From many of the examples I have seen, I would call it eliminating the “intrinsically mundane” from any requirements for human intervention or participation at a given stage in a business process.

Enriched with his unique sense of humor Thomas has spent the past three years evangelizing CEBP through consulting contracts, speaking at seminars and forums and his personal weblog. Today, Jaduka, a provider of business process optimization through “blending real-time communications into critical workflows”, announced that Thomas has been appointed as CEO of Jaduka. Through this appointment Thomas gets to execute on his passion by seeing his vision implemented across a wide range of enterprises of all sizes.

In a Calliflower conference call this morning Thomas provided more details about where he sees Jaduka heading:

“My focus will be on helping our enterprise software partners and customers employ communications to improve efficiency, employee productivity and customer experience. With an API accessed by companies a million times daily and a platform with 1 billion user accounts, Jaduka is well positioned to serve both the $250 billion BPO and $350 billion Telco 2.0 marketplaces.”

• Jaduka is focused on embedding voice into existing enterprise applications; they are NOT a provider of voice applications (see Voxeo for these)
• the Jaduka API is already called upon over one million times per day demonstrating that it is a solid, tested, robust service
• Jaduka has solved the problem of scalability; this is perhaps Jaduka’s leading differentiation from any competitors
• Jaduka is looking to launch a new service that will make it radically easy to integrate voice into current enterprise applications
• Jaduka focuses its marketing efforts on enterprise developers (and not telephony or voice developers); they look to partner opportunities with enterprise software vendors such as Oracle and SAP as well as system integrators.

Thomas was another of Andy Abramson’s “draft picks” for leading change in the conversation and communications space. From my own personal experience interacting with Thomas over the past eighteen months, Jaduka has a winner at the top who can now deliver cost savings and productivity enhancements to many, many enterprises in these economically challenging times.

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• Howe goes to Jaduka (saunderslog.com)

When fellow blogger Dan York joined Voxeo Corporation last October, very few of us in the IP-based communications blogging space had heard of this rapidly growing service provider. Over the next few months, sometimes with Dan’s assistance, Voxeo has become a familiar name identified with a self-financed startup, a profitable business and a very large enterprise customer base focused on supporting voice applications through third party development activity. Revenue generation comes solely from their “cloud” hosting and VoIP/SIP communications server software business. Last week, in following up on a couple of press releases, I had the opportunity to interview Voxeo’s CEO, Jonathan Taylor, and to learn much more about their success story.

Fundamentally Voxeo provides hosting environments for telephony applications, whether hosted on their in-house server “cloud” or on a customer’s premise-based servers. Developers write applications to their Prophecy platform creating XML files and SIP connections that are understood by the Prophecy-enabled servers. The Prophecy 9 client used by developers to create and manage these applications is now available for Mac OS X and Linux in addition to their legacy availability for Windows. Originally Voxeo only offered a hosted service but two years ago, in response to customer demand, they also provided the capability to support customers’ premise-based servers. Key elements of their program that have led to their success (and profitability) include:

• No charge for downloading, and use of, their software
• A focus on ease of development and deployment
• Charging customers only when a service is launched and providing business value
• Option to use either Voxeo’s hosting “cloud” or customers’ premise-based servers (usually based on the overall business case for supporting the application)
• Licensing based on a “per port” or “per minute” business model, as appropriate
• Providing Prophecy as a suite of components for SIP implementations
• A platform based entirely on open standards
• Including solutions for supporting conferencing, voice mail, call recording, speech recognition and auto-attendant requirements
• A strong channel and developer focus recognizing the role of third party professional developers as their key to implementing their enterprise customers’ services
• Lowering their customer support requirements through innovation in their software.

Two recent press releases covered:

• Launch of Prophecy 9, providing support for OS X and Linux clients to their platform as well as a new management console that not only reduces the complexity of development and associated deployment costs but also provides increased scalability.
• Acquisition of Beijing, China-based Micromethod, not only complementing Voxeo’s Prophecy suite of modules with their SIP-focused products but also providing a base for expanding Voxeo into serving the Asia-Pacific markets..

When I asked Jonathan about representative applications beyond the flexible yet effective IVR applications they can support, the list of several thousand applications includes:

• Intelligent call routing (using their call control features)
• Voice mashups providing access to, say, email or Google Calendar
• Anonymous calling services
• Facilitating calling services for children’s websites such as Nickelodeon.

Jonathan summed up their application support as providing a “services innovation platform” that operates “at the edge”, bypassing any carrier dependence beyond acting as a pipeline for their services. A final key feature is their provision of a highly accurate billing infrastructure, critical to their ability to support both their own invoicing and receivables management as well as their customers’.

Last Wednesday Voxeo issued a third press release discussing some of their business success with revenue growth of 99.7% (no rounding allowed – who would believe 100%, they say), 18 successive profitable quarters and a very high customer retention rate. Not being a public company they do not need to release any detailed financials. But building and supporting a community of 31,000 developers probably says it all.

In conclusion, Voxeo’s business represents a practical, successful and profitable implementation of Alec Saunders Voice 2.0 Manifesto, emphasizing that the value-add for voice conversations going forward lies in the applications.

Note 1: Tomorrow morning (August 26) Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor will be the guest for Alec Saunders’ daily Squawkbox conference call. Dan York provides more details on how to participate. If you miss the call, you can hear the recording posted on SaundersLog.com.

Note: Voxeo’s hosted “cloud” also supports connectivity to Skype for inbound calls.

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OnState Communications hosts business communications services that facilitate customer relationship management and enterprise marketing activities. OnState Call Center for Skype allows even the smallest business to operate a call center with geographically disbursed agents. OnState Unified Communications provides complete business real time communications management by extending the call center back office functionality to include conversation recording and archiving as well as messaging activities such as email and voice mail.

Customer conversations, whether through Skype or the legacy PSTN, may be initiated from a website with click-to-call and click-to-chat buttons, toll free numbers or direct inward dialing (DID) numbers. All back office agent connectivity is handled via Skype to minimize costs.

OnState is a one-stop supplier whose services include setting up not only their own services but also complementary services such as management of Skype accounts and Skype hardware acquisition.

Summary from Supplier: OnState’s founding and management team have pioneered communications solutions that drive customer service and empower business users – so they are aptly named the call center guys. Through highly successful careers with industry giants such as Cisco Systems, GeoTel Communications, and Nortel, they hold scores of industry patents for applications that you may be using right now including: Automatic Call Distributors (ACD); Intelligent Call Routing; Network Call Routing; Computer Telephony Integration (CTI); Voice Response Units (VRU); Customer Relationship Management (CRM); and Quality Assurance and Employee Performance Management.

Always at the forefront of business communications tools that directly serve people, the OnState team is redefining the traditional call center paradigm. They deliver a solution that exploits the convergence of advanced Internet, voice and networking technologies to create value-driven collaborative environments – at the lowest cost possible anytime, anywhere.

Website: www.on-state.com

Products and Services:

• OnState Call Center for Skype
• OnState Unified Communications

Last fall I reviewed Convenos Meeting Center, positioning it as “Your Conference Board Room on the Internet”:

Convenos Meeting Center is a complete conference sharing collaborative environment suitable for both ad hoc and scheduled meetings as well as a virtual meeting room for “persistent”, project-dedicated business activities such as key account sales strategizing or product management support.

I mentioned, however, that one shortcoming was that its Application Sharing was sluggish and found that Convenos only officially supported Internet Explorer as its platform. Last month Convenos released an upgrade that:

• has “lightning-fast” Application Sharing
• supports Firefox as a browser platform
• is Microsoft Vista tolerant (sessions have been known to run successfully on Vista platforms; they just are not sure they have found all the “gotchas”.)
• reduces installation time by about 50%
• provides enhanced Outlook support for scheduling meetings

I did some basic application sharing tests this week and can report that the Application Sharing is very fast — even transmitting some video (but not audio) from the PGA Tour site. Convenos incorporated a “mirror server” into their collaboration architecture to accomplish this.

As a default Firefox browser user, login to, and operation of, my ongoing “Test” Convenos Meeting Room worked just fine. One of the Convenos support staff, who served as another meeting participant during my trial session mentioned above, related a CMC experience where he did not realize two of the participants were on Vista until they mentioned it well into the session. On the other hand they want to do further testing before claiming full Vista compatibility.

If you are currently a Convenos user the upgrade will be offered automatically when you next log into your Convenos subscription. Should you encounter any difficulties with this route, then simply Uninstall your previous installation, reboot your PC and log back, you will have a successful upgrade. The end result performance is definitely worth taking the time to upgrade.

Convenos can be accessed either as an independent browser-based Windows application or as a Skype Extra as a complement to Skype conversations. The Convenos Meeting Center Extra, which recently received Skype certification, provides a complete “instant meeting” Convenos web conferencing mode which incorporates the upgraded Application Sharing . .

And in the same April Convenos newsletter, they remind of the “Green” benefit of collaboration in addition to the well-known cost and productivity benefits:

Did you know that aviation is the world’s fastest growing man-made source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and is a major contributor to global warming? Per PlanetArk, 16,000 commercial airplanes release 600 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. A recent survey conducted by a leading unified communications consultancy group revealed that 70% of organizations surveyed rated “reducing organizational carbon footprints” as a key driver in their decision to invest in web conferencing and collaboration.

In these times of rapidly rising fuel prices, one more consideration for using collaboration tools.

One unique aspect of Skype is its very “fluid” or simple approach to adding a another contact to a Skype call to build a conference call. Select “Add a Caller”, select the contact to be added (or enter a phone number, if on SkypeOut), click “OK” and the caller is added. I find I am having more frequent multi-party calls as a result of this simplicity of establishing conference calls for up to 10 participants.

In the past web collaboration has been associated with structured meetings, involving scheduling, emailing invitations and other activities just to set up a desktop sharing session. But a “fluid collaboration” (YouTube video) approach – that allows users to spontaneously escalate conversations from voice and text to incorporate desktop sharing, persistent file sharing and whiteboarding – provides a more intuitive ad hoc process. Yugma’s Web Collaboration for desktop sharing has an architecture that has taken this approach.

Another user consideration: The increased acceptance of both Mac (a record 2.1 million sold in the fiscal 2007 fourth quarter) and Linux (especially Ubuntu) platforms in the market a has led to rising demand for Skype Extras that run on these platforms. A good place to start is a desktop sharing application that is effectively agnostic to the operating system and runs seamlessly in cross-platform scenarios.

Yugma, who has been providing desktop sharing services for a couple of years, recently released a version 3 upgrade to its Yugma Skype Edition, Once installed on a Windows platform simply go to Tools | Do More in the Skype for Windows client and “YugmaSE Team Collaboration” will appear on the drop-down list; on the Mac, install Yugma from the Yugma website and then simply start Yugma Skype. Currently Linux participants can view a session but not host one.

Initiating a session: Once Yugma Skype has been installed via the Skype Extras menu, the ad hoc launch process involves:

• launching the host’s Yugma Skype client via Skype’s Tools | Do More menu¹
• inviting the participants available as Skype Contacts via an “Invite Participants” window which sends a Skype chat message with the URL,
• inviting participants who are not Skype contacts via email address entry from the same window; the resulting email, containing a link, should arrive within a couple of minutes of sending; and
• letting the Yugma Skype client download onto the remote participants’ PC’s and install (if this is the first Yugma Skype session on the PC)¹

Operations: The basic Yugma Skype Toolbar provides an overview of several features:

• Begin Sharing: launches the sharing of your own desktop
• The “mouse” desktop icon controls mouse and keyboard sharing with other participants in the session.
• The mannequin image icon allows you, as the host, to change the presenter who would then share his/her desktop.
• The “page” icon launches a file sharing client.
• The crossed sticks icon opens up a drawing toolbar to provide annotation
• The circle starts session recording
• The right arrow commences playback of a recording
• The double circle allows you to upload a recorded file to your PC
• The matrix image launches the session scheduling website page for those events when you require scheduled collaboration..

The Session

The session above is a shared Mac desktop being viewed on my Windows XP Professional laptop.

The host has various options as represented by the toolbar shown above with additional options in the Action drop down menu shown on the right. Usually the host would “Begin Sharing” simply to ensure the connectivity with other parties is there. At that point the host can continue sharing or change the presenter to one of the other participants. Other options in the toolbar are described above. One should note:

• Users must set up the voice conferencing independently using any of the voice services shown below.
• Participants can be invited in either an active sharing mode or a passive viewing only mode.The host would also need to add them to the voice conference call. Only “active sharing” participants are able to share their desktops – when invited by a host on a Professional account.
• Underneath the bandwidth indicator and to the right of the Session ID number is a Click-to-Copy button with three options as shown. Very handy for launching spontaneous, ad hoc sharing sessions when in a Skype conversation.
• Changing presenters, sharing desktop controls, session recording, scheduling and shared file space require one of the Professional accounts beyond a 15-day trial period.
• Yugma Skype will share either the entire desktop or one selected application. Presenters should make sure their screen is not showing any confidential information.
• The “Shared File Space” client provides a “persistent” shared file space where up to 100 MB of “sharable” files may be stored for retrieval either during a session or later. The host has access to his/her Shared File Space even if there are no other participants in a session.
• Persistent Meeting mode: you can leave a meeting open for various participants to join by keeping the same Meeting ID and communicating it to parties with whom you want to do desktop sharing in the normal course of your activities. The host can also “dismiss” participants at will.
• In the upper right corner of the client is a bandwidth indicator; it should be at least two bars strong to have a continuously reliable sharing session.

In our tests, involving two parties, we found that changes on the screen, such as text chat entries and changing the focus window, were transmitted quite rapidly; only the live video of the Skype call could not keep pace with the video movement. Remote display quality is excellent; while normally it will default to an optimum size on a remote PC there is an option to adjust the remote viewer size (File | Settings) for best viewing.

I have found the combination of Yugma Web Collaboration and Skype’s conference calling algorithm make it a very easy process to set up a small training session, to present a personalized product demonstration or to incorporate desktop sharing into a customer support call. If you are in a Skype call and have a persistent meeting implemented, along with a Skype chat session running, it’s as simple as restoring the Yugma client, Copy a URL via the click-to-copy button and Paste the resulting URL into the chat window. The other party(ies) then click on the URL to access the session.

The essentials:

• Operating Systems: Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS/X 10.3 or higher, Linux; also requires Java 1.5 or later.
  • If the user does not have Java installed – often the case for Vista installations, a Yugma-specific Java client is included in the Yugma Skype installation¹.
• Yugma Skype runs on its own (Java) client; however, there is interaction with the web browser; either IE 6 or 7 or Firefox 2.0, as well as the Safari browser on the Mac.
• Meeting Types: Instant, Scheduled, Recurring (through persistent meeting ID)
  • Invite participants via a Skype contact list and email to non-Skype participants
• Packages:
  • Free: (“Personal”) 10 participants plus host; basic desktop sharing, instant sessions only; website support only; sponsor advertisements.
  • Professional: 10, 30, 100, 500 participants: $9.95/month, $29.95/month, $69.95/month, $89.95/month respectively. Adds “change presenter”, remote participant mouse and keyboard controls, session scheduling, web session recording and playback, shared file space. Webinar features on 100, 500 participant packages. Enhanced support via email, phone and web.
  • A 15-day free Professional 10 trial is available to test the service.
• Voice services:
  • Currently voice operates independently of the Yugma Skype client; conference hosts have several options for setting up a conference call:
  • Skype’s inherent conference call feature (up to 10 participants via either Skype or SkypeOut);
  • and three low cost extended conferencing services (long distance charges may apply)
    • Yugma’s Free Teleconferencing service: call into +1-605-475-4261; long distance charges may apply.
    • HighSpeedConferencing (up to 500 participants on either Skype or landline/mobile phones) with HD Voice for Skype participants.
    • iotum’s FreeConferenceCall service (an optional Facebook application – not supported by Yugma)
  • as Yugma’s desktop sharing is almost totally independent of the voice service, you can also use other VoIP or PSTN conferencing services. However, with Skype there is ready access to Skype contacts for chat and other Skype features
• Private (as disclosed by host’s sharing the session ID through individual invitations);
• Public via a Widget button or, for Professional 100 and 500 subscribers, the Yugma Webinar feature.
• Capacity: up to 500 participants
• Web Session Recording (Professional subscription required)
• Access: via Skype Extras (Tools | Do More – Windows only), Skype Extras website (Windows and Mac) or from Yugma’s website (Windows and Mac editions).

Positioning: Yugma Skype is unique for its cross platform desktop sharing capability and providing a free basic desktop sharing service that can have as many as ten participants in a desktop sharing session. Session recording, whiteboarding and file sharing options make it a more feature rich platform. Operation of desktop sharing sessions has always been quite smooth, with rapid refreshes, and transparent to the platform itself provided there is adequate bandwidth on the Internet connection; this is where the bandwidth indicator has been a valuable aid.

Strengths:

• Cross platform desktop sharing (Windows, Mac, Linux)
• Free basic desktop sharing for host + 10 participants
• Rapid remote viewing updates from shared desktop
• Rapidly switch presenters (shared desktop)
• Choice of interactive (Sharing) or passive (Viewer) modes for remote participants
• Several voice conferencing options
• Display versatility: options to resize the remote desktop viewing window
• Web session recording
• Connection strength indicator

Weaknesses:

• Needs the ability to include voice conference information within the desktop sharing invitations
• Lacks tight integration of Skype voice channel to voice conferencing options
• Lack of Outlook integration for email invitations

Other posts in this series on collaboration tools:

• Desktop Collaboration: Ten Years Later – The Skype Impact
• Desktop Collaboration: The Skype Ecosystem Expands
• Convenos Meeting Center: Your Conference Board Room on the Internet

¹Windows Vista users may encounter several “permission” windows during installation as explained in Alec Saunders post about “Sun’s Tactical Error on Java”. This may change with Windows Vista SP1.

Tags: Skype, YugmaSkype, Yugma, Skype Extras, HighSpeedConferencing, iotum, FreeConferenceCall, desktop sharing, Skype Conference

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Yugma is an easy to implement desktop sharing service that allows users to collaborate by quickly sharing individual applications or full PC desktops, whether on Windows, Mac or Linux PC’s. Think of desktop sharing as an auxiliary conversation mode that readily complements voice, text and video conversations.

With an ability to quickly change the shared desktop and provide remote access to a shared desktop, Yugma allows users to collaboratively create and edit documents; train employees, agents and customers or facilitate enhanced customer support. Skype Certified, Yugma hosting sessions are readily launched from the Skype client as a Skype Extra; however, other participants do not need to even have Skype. The desktop sharing sessions are complemented by audio conferencing services that can accessed via either Skype, usually at no charge, and/or conventional telephone connections where long distance charges may apply.

Summary from Vendor:

Yugma is a very easy to use and inexpensive Web Collaboration Tool that lets Skype users instantly share content and ideas using any application or software over the Internet. Whether they are using a Windows, Mac or Linux computer, they can connect on-demand and in real-time with co-workers, clients, friends and family — regardless of whether they are across the city or country or even around the globe. With Yugma, collaborating with others is just a click away. Others will be able to instantly “see what you are talking about,” , enabling you to get more done “together” and “collaboratively,” without ever leaving their computer regardless of where you are.

Yugma’s Philosophy: Why Web Collaboration Needs to be Reinvented (A YouTube Video)

Live Demonstrations Find a session convenient to your schedule.

Ideal for: Home Office, Small and Midsized Businesses (< 1000 employees), Education (University, K-12), Network Marketing Businesses, Non-Profit Organizations, Religious Organizations, Affinity Groups.

Publisher’s Expertise and Background:

Yugma (pronounced YOOG-MA) believes that web collaboration is for everyone, not just people in big companies. We also believe good ideas deserve to be shared, regardless of resources or geographic location. These two beliefs drove us to create an easy-to-use, affordable web collaboration service that works on Windows, Mac and Linux. It is our hope that Yugma will help you to share your ideas, learn more, stay connected with coworkers and customers, feel the need to fly to fewer meetings, and have a more successful business.

The name Yugma is a word from the Sanskrit language meaning “the state of being in unified collaboration.” Yugma, Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in Minnesota, USA and has offices in Minneapolis and India.

Three Video Demonstrations

Product Review

Contact Information:

• Website : http://www.yugma.com
• Phone: +1 (952)400-0357
• Email: info@yugma.com

Products and Services : Yugma has a free Personal service and several Professional services.

• Personal: provides basic desktop sharing across Windows, Mac and Linux platforms for up to 10 participants where the host is the Presenter; it also includes a 15-day trial of the 10 user Professional service.
• Professional 10/30/100/500: adds many features such as changing the Presenter (or shared desktop), remote mouse and keyboard control, session recording and playback, shared file space (up to 100 MB) and annotation/whiteboarding tools. The Professional 100 and 500 also include Webinar management features.

Requirements:

• Skype: Version 3.x or later
• Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux

Product Acccess :

• Latest Version: Version 3.0 (April 1, 2008)
• Skype Extras [Tools | Do More | Get Extras];
• Via website: Schedule/Start/Join a Session

Installation and Operating Comments:

A Host may install the Yugma client from the Skype Extras Manager and subsequently launch sessions via the Skype Extras Manager. Participants are asked to install Yugma from a link sent either to an IM chat session or an email address. Upon clicking the link participants will go through a client installation process that ends up with a “Join a Session” window. Upon entering an identification name and email address the particpant will be brought into the Host’s session.

Personal: as this is a free offering, Yugma will request a user name and email address from each participant resulting in the creation of a Yugma account for each participant; normal privacy policies are in place for the use of the email address.

As Professional is a paid-for option, Yugma will only require that the host have a Yugma account; other participants in a session will be asked to enter an ID name for the session and for an email address; however, this email address will only be used for session tracking purposes and not for promotional purposes.

Offerings and Pricing:

• Personal Yugma: Free, supports up to ten participants
• Professional Yugma 10/30/100/500:
  • 10 Participant: $9.95/month
  • 30 Participant: $29.95/month
  • 100 Participant: $69.95/month
  • 500 Participant: $89.95/month

Pamela, the pioneering third party Skype conversation management utility, has evolved since its launch in 2004 into the premier utility for assisting your Skype activities with features such as call recording, conversation archiving, personalization, call scheduling and enhanced voice mail management. Its Rich Mood Editor, Emoticons, PamCasting and Blogging Support are amongst Pamela’s additional features.

Summary from Supplier : To be supplied by the vendor.

Ideal for: All business persons who use Skype as a critical tool for their business communications.

Publisher’s Expertise and Background: The PamConsult team is the pioneer Skype partner, having done the initial German translation of Skype and having worked with the Skype API’s since they were first made available.

Contact Information:

• Website : http://www.pamela-systems.com
• Phone: Skype Dick Schiferli
• Email: Contact Form

Products and Services : Pamela has four versions:

• Skype Extras: Call Recorder, Rich Mood Editor (free)
• Basic, Standard and Professional:
• Business (recommended): One-time $36.95, includes priority support
• Multi-user licenses available

Requirements:

• Skype: Version 3.6 or later (to take advantage of Call Transfer and High Quality Video recording)
• Platforms: Windows

Product Acccess :

• Skype Extras [Tools | Do More | Get Extras];
• Download Pamela

Installation Comments: When installing you will be asked to agree with the license.

Product Review

Case Study

• Radio Free Asia: A Skype-Facilitated Broadcast Service

Offerings and Pricing:

Voxeo is a hosting service for a variety of voice related business applications including IVR, conferencing services and proprietary enterprise business process applications amongst others. To encourage application development they provide a developer’s site with developer guides. Other applications deployed include auotmated speech recognition, school notification services, package tracking and a front end for voice biometrics authentication. Connections can be made via DID, 800-number with PIN, SIP and Skype. Summary from Supplier : Voxeo helps enterprises improve services and lower costs by automating and connecting their most common phone calls with IV and VoIP solutions.

Main Website : http://www.voxeo.com

Products and Services :

• IVR server hosting
• VoIP platforms hosting services
• Voice Applications
• Prophecy on-premise server license

Programming API Available : Yes

HTML Code Snippets Available : No

Main Category :Service Provider, Enterprise, Small Business

Skype, a business unit of eBay, is the world’s pre-eminent Internet conversation service providing the ability to have free voice, text and/or video conversations worldwide with other Skype users. In addition Skype provides low cost voice connections to virtually any landline phone worldwide as well as mobile phones in North America (U.S. and Canada). It also provides voice connections to mobile phones elsewhere; however, in a “caller pays” wireless service world these calls do have somewhat higher charges.

With any of today’s personal computers, whether Windows-, Mac- or Linux-based, Skype users can not only converse but also have up to ten-party conference calls; exchange files, such as documents and photographs; send SMS messages and leave voicemails. A key security feature of Skype is that all conversations are encrypted as well as the file transfer. Communications enhanced business solutions, such as collaboration tools, call centers and unified messaging, are available from Skype partners.

Unique features of Skype include:

• Easily installed software (over 275 million accounts have been registered worldwide)
• Simple, straight forward user interface:
  • single click to initiate a conversation,
  • user managed contact directory,
  • full touchtone dialpad (usually to dial extensions or provide PIN numbers)
• High Definition (HD) voice: all Skype-to-Skype calls feature wideband voice,
  • capturing a more true-to-life high quality audio that makes conversations more readily understood
  • reduces “squawkiness” of traditional phone conversations
• Chat session archive going back six months
• Contact management, including caller blocking, only accepting calls from established contacts, etc.
• Standard Video: works with most webcams, including Mac iSight
  • 320 x 240 @ 15 fps
• High Quality Video: 640 x 480 @ 30 fps
  • requires Intel dual core processor and Logitech webcam with Carl-Zeiss optics

The Skype Ecosystem

Skype has established a network of hardware and software partners to extend Skype’s reach beyond the PC. Hardware partners produce Skype phones and headsets; software partners extend Skype’s traditional business model disruption by offering legacy enterprise telephony services, such as call centers and collaboration tools, at costs that are affordable for the small-to-medium business.

Skype Hardware

Skype’ licensed hardware vendors supply telephony hardware to support voice calls and text messaging. Their products include:

• Headsets for PC’s
• USB telephones that work in conjunction with Skype on the PC
• PC-Free phones which connect directly to the Internet via embedded Skype firmware

Skype also has worked with several mobile platform vendors to supply embedded firmware and software on Nokia Internet Tablets, Sony entertainment devices and the forthcoming Intel Mobile Internet Devices.

In late 2007 Skype partnered with the 3 wireless service in the U.K. to launch the 3 Skypephone that allows users of the service to make voice calls to, and/or exchange text messages with, any Skype user worldwide at no cost. Calls to PSTN numbers are via 3′s standard wireless services. The 3 Skypephone also includes popular mobile device features such as a snapshot/video camera and a media player. Other software partners have developed services that provide Skype access on RIM’s Blackberries, Nokia N- and E-series multimedia phones and Windows Mobile devices.

Skype and Communications Enhanced Business Processes

Skype has partnered with several developers to develop communications enhanced business solutions that significantly reduce business process costs. Collaboration tools, call center management, fax transmission, hosted unified messaging services, hosted voice services, Skype utilities (such as call recording, personalization, enhanced voice mail and session archiving) and high quality hosted conference calls are amongst the business tools offered by Skype’s partners. The impact of Skype’s partner offerings is often to open up to small businesses many communications tools that have traditionally been considered only to be cost effective for larger enterprises. [More details]

Skype API’s and Skype Developer Program

For developers and IT professionals who wish to either incorporate Skype into their offerings or develop new communications enhanced business processes, Skype’s Developer Program offers a full range of API’s and SDK’s to facilitate integration of Skype and its services.

iotum provides a Free Conference Call service for Facebook. iotum also hosts the daily SquawkBox Conference Call that discusses technology issues of the day.

Summary from the Vendor: Organize free conference calls with your friends, family, co-workers, business contacts, team or study group. Get everyone on the phone right now; or schedule a conference call with as many participants as you like. Iotum has introduced two new free conference calling services for you. FREE Conference Calls is the perfect conference call service for Facebook users to organize a business conference call, or hold a family call. Every conference call becomes a Facebook event complete with invites, attendees, calendar entry, reminders, plus SMS and moderation features.

Main Website: http://www.iotum.com

Products and Services

• Free Conference Call for Facebook
• SquawkBox Blog

Programming API Available: No

HTML Code Snippets Available: No

When looking at Convenos, think of entering your conference or board room and encountering the audio-visual devices within that room: a slide projector, a whiteboard, a video monitor and probably a display adapter with screen. In essence Convenos Meeting Center moves that board room to the Internet, even to the point where you can enter and leave the board room at will and re-enter to find all your shared content just as you left them previously. Convenos Meeting Center is a complete conference sharing collaborative environment suitable for both ad hoc and scheduled meetings as well as a virtual meeting room for “persistent”, project-dedicated business activities such as key account sales strategizing or product management support. Perhaps the best indicator of its effectiveness is that Convenos Meeting Center is being adopted by enterprises requiring up to three figure numbers of licenses.

Sharing Modes: The essence of Convenos is demonstrated in their tab bar’s titles:

• Slides: A full presentation slide manager (PowerPoint, PDF and MS Office files, etc.)
• Web: Cobrowsing (sharing links) of web pages
• Draw: A virtual whiteboard with the usual annotation capabilities
• Media: embedded Windows Media Player for full motion video sharing
• AppShare: an application sharing environment for either your full desktop or one individual desktop application window

In addition to displaying the five basic services, the Convenos Meeting Center session displays sidebars that facilitate and support management of the meeting:

The left sidebar includes single click access to shared content (such as presentations and documents formatted for sharing in the Slide tab, Bookmarks for display in the Web Tab or videos to show in the Media tab), listing of logged in users and a text chat service. The right hand sidebar includes Meeting Information (Name, Type, Host, etc.), Polls, Attendees (all who are authorized to attend the meeting and their status), a Notepad and a File Share window for files that you wish to allow all meeting participants to download.

The essentials:

• Convenos runs inside an Microsoft Internet Explorer browser ((IE 6 or later). However, although not supported by Convenos, I was also able to operate the Convenos Meeting Center environment in a Firefox browser tab when using the Firefox IE Tab extension. And, since it uses Internet Explorer and associated technologies, it requires Windows 2000/XP/Vista platforms. Update May 2008: April 2008 upgrade now includes Firefox 2.0 support.
• Meeting Types: Scheduled, Recurring (say, weekly), Ongoing (persistent) and Instant
• Packages: Standard (up to 20 participants, 25GB storage, $30/license/month); Professional (up to 99 participants, 100GB storage, $100/license/month)
• Voice services: Skype (up to 10 participants); HighSpeedConferencing (up to 99 participants) or a host-defined option
• Private and Open (Public) Meetings
• Capacity: 99 participants except when doing Application Sharing – 25 participants
• Access: via Skype Extras: Tools | Do More | Get Extras | Business or download from Convenos website.

Setup and Operation

There are three options for setting up a Convenos Meeting: Web-based, Outlook or as a Skype Extra. While the first two are more appropriate for Scheduled, Recurring and Ongoing meetings; the latter is more appropriate for, and limited to, Instant Meetings. All three options have a one-time free 14-day trial period after which subscription charges apply.

Outlook: This is probably the most general approach with easiest setup of scheduled, recurring and ongoing meetings since it links into your Outlook Contacts and Calendar. Install the Convenos Outlook plug-in, click on the Schedule Meeting or Instant Meeting button, fill in the meeting information, select participants from your Outlook Contacts and send the email invitations. Click on the link to enter the meeting; as the email is received it automatically gets added to Outlook Calendars of all the participants. Any meeting scheduled from the Outlook plug-in will default to using Skype for the voice service; this can be changed by going to My Convenos described below.

Web-based: Convenos is managed through a My Convenos host management session in IE. The three primary categories are Meetings (Enter/Create/Start Instant Meeting), Setup (My Profile, Preferences, Edit Instant Meeting, Purchase and Downloads) and Assistance (Help, Support). Creation of a meeting involves multiple steps including:

• Meeting information: Title, Description, Type, Schedule Information (for Scheduled and Recurring Meetings)
• Meeting Options: Open or Private, Hide Attendees Information, Server Location
• Audio Options: Skype only, Mixed VoIP, landline and mobile (HighSpeedConferencing) or host-defined audio
• Invite Attendees: via email address or from Convenos Contact list, set Attendees’ privileges: (Guest, Participant, Speaker, Recorder)

Skype integration via this option largely consists of automatically bringing Skype users into the voice conversation when they enter the meeting. During any registration session you are asked to enter your Skype Name (but not password) such that when Convenos detects you are entering a meeting it also brings you into the Skype conference call session.

One shortcoming here is the lack of integration with Skype Contacts where one could select a Skype Contact for an invitation and send the invitation via Skype IM (in a manner similar to how the Convenos Skype Extra works).

Actual operation involves the Host entering the meeting from his/her My Convenos while participants can enter from a link in the email (or if they are already a Convenos Contact, from their “My Convenos”). An initial ActiveX client download (~1.5 MB) is required; for Private meetings, non-registered contacts are required to fill in some contact information to register with Convenos. However, given this is an enterprise tool, these operations, once completed, are not repeated, yet they maintain an appropriate element of privacy and security for Convenos sessions. (For Open meetings a one-time participant ID and Skype Name, if appropriate, are all that are requested.)

The Instant Meeting set up via MyConvenos jumps to the Attendee screen from which you can invite contacts. Not quite as spontaneous as inviting contacts via the Convenos Outlook plug-in or directly out of a Skype user’s Contact List, such as with the Convenos Skype Extra, unless the invitee has previously registered with Convenos.

One key area for consideration is how a sharing environment displays across disparate screen sizes of the various participants. Convenos handles this by placing their session in an Internet Explorer window which can be resized in the normal Windows manner. Optionally the sidebars can be hidden to create an even larger display space.

Content for the Slide Tab is generated by a Convenos print driver that converts (“prints”) any file format to a jpg file which can then be viewed in the Slide Tab. As a result slide shows can comprise PowerPoint, PDF, Word, Excel, MS Project or any other printable document; however, they cannot be edited within the Slide tab.

Cobrowsing essentially consists of sharing URL’s to be viewing the same page and, while it will track mouse and keyboard activity, it does not allow any interactivity such as sharing entry of form data (such as Comments to Skype Journal). In practice this is a security feature to prevent unauthorized purchases and access to other personal/confidential activity. When watching a YouTube video each participant must actually start the video and the audio stream comes from each individual’s web browser. (The WEB tab essentially embeds an IE session into the Convenos session.) To share interactivity such as form entry, you must share an IE session under the Application Sharing tab.

A unique feature of the cobrowser, whiteboard (DRAW) and Media Player is the content in these tabs can be captured and transferred to the Slide Tab’s documents for viewing as a slide.

The Media Tab, which supports any video format supported by Windows Media Player including MPEG 4, has seen increased use with the evolution of user generated video content, especially for training and customer support videos.

The one weak area is desktop sharing on two counts:

1. There are only options to share either the full Desktop or one individual application (window) but not multiple selected application windows.
2. In several sessions we found the refresh/update rate to be sluggish. Fast enough to be usable; however, not “snappy”. Update May, 2008; this issue has been addressed.

One major strength of Convenos is the “persistence” of Ongoing Meetings: you can leave the meeting and come back several days later and find the “state” of the meeting has not changed (unless others with appropriate privileges have entered and made some changes). All your documents are there; you are back at the last slide viewed in the Slides tab, the last web page viewed in the cobrowser and the most recent markup of the whiteboard.

Convenos Skype Extra (Instant Meeting): The Convenos Skype Extra is installed via the Tools | Do More | Get Extras | Business path from the Skype for Windows client. Upon installing you are asked to enter your Convenos registration information (email, password) and a Skype Contact window will appear from which you can select names for an Instant Meeting session. Click on Start and meeting information, including a link URL, will go out via Skype Chat windows to each participant.

Subsequently, right click on a Skype Contact’s Name, select DoMore and Convenos Meeting Center. The Skype Contact Window mentioned above appears again with the Contact’s name as the first person to be included in a Convenos session. Click on Start and meeting information, including a link URL, will go out via Chat windows to the designated Contact(s). Basically, four clicks and you are launching a Convenos Instant Meeting session.

Positioning: Ideally suited as an enterprise team building and bonding tool, especially when team members are geographically disbursed. A complete suite of hosted tools for customer presentations, sales and support training, project management infrastructure, recurring team meetings and document sharing.

Strengths:

• A complete conference room environment suitable for enterprise team collaboration and external presentations
• Rapidly switch amongst the various sharing modes
• Persistence: ongoing meetings to support enterprise or special interest community projects
• Voice options: while Skype is there, can be expanded to allow other options for >10 participant sessions; infrastructure inherently provides backup in the case of a specific service’s outage or capacity limitations
• Display versatility: total scaling within the limitations of a participant’s screen size and resolution.
• Skype and Outlook integration
• Full motion video sharing
• Much more user friendly, intuitive user interface and less costly than Webex
• A feature compatible, Skype-enabled alternative to GoToMeeting
• On-the-fly polling to spontaneously develop consensus amongst participants
• Could use a designated coordinator but requires no assigned IT support
• Includes hosted storage of commonly shared and accessed content

Weaknesses:

• Limitations on application sharing (sluggish, options for sharing applications)
• Mildly cumbersome for setting up Instant Meetings from My Convenos manager.
• Flash or QuickTime support comes only via the “Web” mode using the relevant inherent IE plug-ins

May 2008 Update: April 2008 upgrade provides “lightning-fast” application sharing, Firefox 2.0 support and works with many Microsoft Vista installations.