• Unlimited Usage – While system capacity can be reserved and regulated in a scheduled environment, ad hoc usage will require that each user have unlimited on-demand access. Web conferencing will fail as an ad hoc tool if the user finds the need to use it spontaneously and attempts to initiate a session, only to find the simultaneous session capacity has been exceeded. In the same vein, a flat pricing model – where the user is not being charged for incremental minutes – is essential for stimulating ad hoc usage.
  
  
• Easy Initiation – Starting an ad hoc web conferencing session must become extremely easy – treating a web conference as a separate application will not work. There are two clear opportunities to do this: a) initiating a web conference to elevate an IM session, and b) initiating a web conference to augment an IP-based audio call. Since both of these instances happen in an IP environment where the parties in the call are known, web conferencing can become a seamless “one-click” feature that can be added on demand.
  
  
• Become an Integrated Feature – From the user’s perspective, web conferencing will mutate from being a stand-alone service to becoming a feature that one can initiate from within other applications. For example, a user may be viewing an email and want to start a quick session with the author. A presence indicator in the email will show if the author is available, and a click or two of the mouse can start a web conferencing session. This capability becomes even more powerful when web conferencing is integrated into the organization’s workflow applications. Imagine an ERP application that may indicate low inventory of a particular item. A presence indicator may indicate if a person in the supplier warehouse is available; a web conference could then be initiated with one click. In these scenarios web conferencing becomes a deeply engrained network-based resource that is available on-tap to augment any application.

Having web conferencing capacity “on tap” for use at all times, making it easy to initiate spontaneous sessions, integrating it into the corporate IT infrastructure, and making it a feature that’s available within productivity and workflow applications are all key directions for the technology. These directions are necessary for web conferencing to realize its potential to become an extremely valuable ad hoc conferencing tool, one that will work its way into the fabric of daily communications.


The Turning Point: Enter IT

The wide acceptance and usage of ASP services by renegade users is capturing the attention of IT departments and finance controllers. While using the technology has its returns, the money being spent has reached a level where formal reviews are being launched to find a way to consolidate the renegade departmental expenses under central control. This is forcing IT to become involved, which results in a formal user needs assessment and vendor selection. IT organizations’ concerns for selecting a web conferencing solution include:

• Security – How secure is the ASP solution? If the ASP’s server is located physically off-premise and/or logically outside of the organization’s firewall, then the content of each web conference is potentially at risk. For some industries such as legal, health care, and financial institutions, data cannot travel outside of the organization either physically or logically due to privacy or audit trail regulations. Still another security risk is simply the log that details which users are involved in which conferences, and when they occurred.
  
  
• Network Impact – If the ASP’s server is not on an internal network, then additional bandwidth capacity or a dedicated connection outside of the organization is needed. If the connection is via the Internet, than additional ISP bandwidth must be purchased.
  
  
• Reliability and Control – IT managers know that their job is on the line if they recommend an ASP provider that fails to deliver.
  
  
• Integration – Can the ASP solution integrate with the organization’s IT infrastructure? At a basic level, being able to tap the employee directory database is very desirable as creating and maintaining user accounts becomes automatic. Integrating with an audio conferencing system or service makes setting up and controlling conferences easier for users. In the long run, being able to integrate web conferencing with IM / Presence management servers and the organization’s workflow applications will push usage and productivity to the next level.
  
  
• Service Cost – Using an ASP service is a make vs. buy decision. Is the ASP providing a service that justifies an on-going cost? Can the job be done more cost effectively with internal staff? Does the organization have the server and network infrastructure in place to support web conferencing?

• Control – On-premise deployment permits the IT organization to have total control over the policies used to administer the server; and thus be totally consistent with the policies of the rest of the IT infrastructure (not the ASP’s policies). Thus IT will also have total control over issues such as scheduling server maintenance and if/when to perform software updates (which also may lead to implications for user training). As web conferencing becomes a mainstream strategic tool, many IT organizations place a high value on total control.
  
  
• Security – While security is a critical make-or-break issue for certain industries, it is increasingly becoming an important issue for all web conferencing users. On-premise deployment means a solution for internal use can be provided completely behind the organization’s firewall without any connections to the Internet. External participants can be added using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and the newer Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption, and the organization has total control over which firewall ports (port 80 or more) to open. Meeting schedule logs – which would tell an outside party who participated in which meetings – as well as uploaded presentations and on-line archives of the meetings also stay behind the organization’s firewall. Thus the organization remains in total control of its security policies.
  
  
• Economics – For organizations that do not have strong control or security concerns, the decision to outsource web conferencing services may boil down to pure economics. In such cases an accurate “make vs buy” analysis should be performed. (We provide a worksheet of factors to include in this analysis later in this paper.) We believe that any economic analysis should be constructed with an “unlimited use, all users” assumption. If web conferencing is to be fueled by ad hoc use in an organization to achieve mainstream acceptance, users cannot be hampered by running out of simultaneous user licenses or, even worse, worrying about facing overage penalties when minutes start to grow beyond a best-guess forecast. The concurrent user license fees for on-premise servers are much lower than their ASP counterparts – some are licensed on the total size of the organization, which results in a named license providing for all – and all result in unlimited minutes.

In addition to the advantages that were identified by the current users of on-premise servers, Wainhouse Research believes the following advantages should be considered to help catalyze the movement of web conferencing from early adopter to mainstream usage:

• Integration – The ad hoc usage of web conferencing will increase dramatically if the technology is tightly integrated into an organization’s infrastructure and applications. Infrastructure integration includes interfacing with employee directories (including group policies) as well as audio conferencing PBX’s / bridges (PSTN and/or VoIP) and IM/presence servers. Application integration means embedding the ability to initiate web conferencing (with the current participants opening to the right applet) into the workflow applications that the organization currently uses – not the standard one that the ASP develops. Locating the web conferencing server on-premise and behind the firewall makes tighter integration possible – web conferencing blends to become a “feature” to aid workflow – which will catalyze ad hoc usage and increase productivity.
  
  
• Customization – An on-premise server can be customized while an ASP service typically must stay generic across its subscriber base. For example, the way a particular feature is implemented could be streamlined to better fit the way a particular organization works. If a module is not used, it can be deleted to reduce confusion. The look-and-feel can be changed to match the rest of the organization’s applications – including the one that launched the web conferencing session.

Integration and customization can dramatically increase the ease-of-use of a web conferencing solution. While many organizations currently do not consider web conferencing a “core competency” technology that warrants IT resources, forward looking organizations are beginning to realize that as web conferencing becomes entrenched into the workflow, the increased productivity gained represents a unique competitive advantage. Thus unlike generic ASP offerings that are shared by competitors, a tightly integrated and customized premise-based server – with high user adoption because ease-of-use has been tailored to the specific needs of the organization – starts to look like an IT core competency that can deliver a competitive advantage.


The Advantages to an ASP Service

There are advantages to ASP services – and deploying an on-premise server is not the right solution for every organization. The #1 strength of the ASP model is the ability to enable any individual, anywhere to be instantly successful holding web conferences, without the need for any internal IT resources or pre-planning. This ability to painlessly enable new users has fueled the rapid growth of web conferencing by early adopters.

ASP services remains a viable option for organizations that believe the “opportunity cost” of using internal IT resources to implement an on premise server is not worth taking the resource off of other IT projects. Frankly, each organization has its own internal IT “hurdle rate” and it is not the purpose of this paper to question this rate. It IS the purpose of this paper to ensure the costs of deploying an on-premise server is well understood.
In addition, ASP services can be the more secure, reliable, and better performing option if the organization has a constrained or weak IT infrastructure, inadequate external bandwidth (applies to external events only), or lax security policies.

ASP service providers have expanded their offerings with specialized solutions that include applications for events, distance learning, and support – though these solutions are “generic-to-all” customers and competitors. Note that one approach may be to contract the ASP’s specialized solution separately as needed to augment the internal server which is used for general meetings – though in this case there may actually be more value in the specialized solution as a “workflow” application than the web conferencing technology. Perhaps the better option – if the organization has an existing, accepted support application for example – is to integrate the web conferencing features of an on premise server into the organization’s existing workflow application, which would result in a solution that is customized for the organization’s needs, does not require re-training, and is not available to the organization’s competitors.


Comparing On-Premise Server vs ASP Costs

The following worksheet is provided as a guide to performing a ballpark cost analysis. Note the cost of ASP services can vary widely depending on vendor, volume, and features. We have provided estimated cost data for deploying a premise-based server as provided by WiredRed, the sponsor of this whitepaper.

Cost Analysis Worksheet

Some notes on the cost analysis worksheet follow:

• The analysis was performed for providing 25 concurrent user ports over three years, which is approximately the estimated capacity needed for a 100-person organization – though we expect the ratio of licenses to people to increase over time as web conferencing becomes mainstream.
  
  
• The 1U Dell server (2.8 GHz Xeon processor, 1 GB memory, 10K RPM SCSI drive, Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition) well exceeds WiredRed’s minimum requirements, so there is plenty of room to grow. The server cost includes a flat-panel monitor and keyboard/mouse which may not be need in a data center environment.
  
  
• Server installation is budgeted at one day. While this may seem aggressive, our interviews with several WiredRed customers confirms that this is the case. Key to achieving this metric is that the WiredRed e/pop web conferencing server software requires NO prerequisite software – so there is nothing to install or configure other than the e/pop web conferencing server software itself. In most cases customers installed the software in less than an hour.
  
  
• Server Administration is budgeted at two days per year. This is primarily to oversee user administration and install software upgrades.
  
  
• We did not factor in a cost for network, but want to note that internal meetings would require NO network bandwidth back to the ASP. While network usage may not be an issue for traditional data-oriented web conferences, network usage can become a factor quickly when IP based audio and video are added. Some customers may want to factor in network cost, especially if the organization’s ISP costs are significant or if a dedicated network connection is maintained to the web conferencing ASP.

The Bottom Line: Buy One Year, Get Two Years Free

Our analysis indicates the on-premise server deployment costs about 1/3 (or 31%) of the ASP solution. Put differently, the cost of one year of ASP services will pay for deploying an on-premise server for three years.

As favorable as this economic analysis appears, as discussed in previous sections of this whitepaper there are other reasons besides economics for considering an on-premise server – including control and security. We believe an important conclusion to draw from the economic analysis is that the relatively low cost of on-premise deployment, when compared to ASP services, leaves the savvy user with funding room for incremental investment in additional capacity (to ensure plenty of capacity for ad hoc conversations) and IM/presence and workflow application integration (to make ad hoc conversations easy to initiate). These incremental investments likely will help catalyze mainstream usage of the technology in an organization.


Key Criteria for Choosing On-Premise Server Software

The task of choosing a vendor of web conferencing server software has actually become a little easier over time as the technology has progressed. The following list of criteria is presented in three primary groupings, based on whether a vendor performs all required user functions, offer truly enterprise-class software, and has software that is easy to install and maintain.

Performs All Required User Functions

• Baseline features – These include application / screen sharing and presentations. Remote control is highly desirable for support applications.
  
  
• Transparent client software download and installation – This is essential for achieving low internal support costs, and for holding conferences involving participants outside of the organization.
  
  
• Ease-of-use – Product must allow quick initiation of conferences (“one click”), and must present an intuitive user interface once the conference is underway.
  
  
• Commercial quality audio over IP – VoIP is very useable with a premise-based server since network quality is less of an issue. Since data and voice can be initiated at the same time, ad hoc conferencing becomes easy. VoIP can also reduce telecom charges, especially in conferences that include participants that are outside of the organization.
  
  
• Desktop video – Increasingly video is becoming a requirement as it brings an increased level of “connected-ness” to the conference. Quality is key, and the bandwidth required to support high-quality video within the organization is becoming readily available. Video must be easy to initiate as part of the conference. The only additional hardware requirement should be an inexpensive USB webcam.
  
  

• Scalable, real-time platform – The underlying technology needs to be able to grow with the organization’s needs, and be architected to support real-time communications.
  
  
• Support for integration with an organization’s existing LDAP-compliant employee directories and presence / IM servers – Has an SDK to integrate with the organization’s workflow applications through clearly-defined API’s and standard mechanisms such as .NET, XML/SOAP, and WSDL.
  
  
• Security – Supports SSL/TLS, RC4, DES, 3DES, AES and RSA for session encryption. User logins and passwords should be available to control conference access.
  
  
• A/V compatibility -- Compatible with standard audio-visual peripherals including microphones, headsets and USB webcams.
  
  
• Supports industry standard audio and video algorithms.
  
  
• Runs on an industry standard hardware/OS platform.
  

• Requires no prerequisite software – This is key for both easy installation and maintenance. Only the server software should need to be installed and there should be no prerequisite software to maintain or upgrade. A true stand-alone solution also contains no third party sub-components such as requiring an external database, an Apache or IIS web server, etc
  
  
• Firewall Friendly – Operates with an administrator-selectable set of firewall ports and can be configured to operate inside or outside of the firewall.
  
  
• Transparent, “no-effort” client installation for low support overhead and easy updates.
  
  
• Easy to install software updates – again, no prerequisite or dependent software to keep in sync with server releases.
  
  
• Dedicated vendor support including telephone hotline.
  

De-Mystifying Server Set-up and Administration

Many users who would benefit from an on-premise web conferencing server believe that installing and maintaining server software is a black art best left to seasoned IT types with multiple engineering degrees and infinite patience. While this may have been the case years ago, some of the newer web conferencing vendors’ products – including WiredRed’s e/pop Web Conferencing – are only slightly more complicated than installing a standard Windows application. In fact one of the end users interviewed for this article claimed that he installed e/pop in less than one hour.

A sample set up and configuration wizard might include the following steps:

1. Click on a web link to download the server set-up file
   
   
2. Run the set-up application and answer the installation questions (the default answers work for most environments)
   
   
3. Decide if the software should run as an application or service (latter is recommended)
   
   
4. When installation completes, a window appears with the URL to the server