There is a plethora of software products on the web offering online collaboration for a sub $50/month price point. While nearly everyone is familiar with Cisco's WebEx products, there are many other players in this fragmented market segment.
Some of the web based collaboration products are simply screen sharing applications which allow multiple users to view a common document. VNC appears to be a common software for providing these applications. Glance Networks, BeamYourScreen, and GoMeetNow are three that I tried. Each does an effective job at providing screen sharing and they cost between $24.95 and $49/month for 5 users according to their posted prices. Each of these required a software download.
There are other web based collaboration products that offer live VoIP audio and web-cam video along with screen sharing and specific application sharing. These vary in methodology but many appear to be Flash based using Red5 or Adobe. Adobe offers their ConnectPro product, but their $350 price point for 5 users is on the high side of the marketplace. Microsoft LiveMeeting and WebEx Meeting Center are also $100+/month services. In the middle of the pack price wise are companies such as MegaMeeting, SightSpeed, Persony, and Spreed. I tried several of them and liked and disliked several aspects of each. At the bargain end of the spectrum is Google's beta product as well as a product from Vyew. Both appeared to have a very good combination of features but in my demo of each I found both lacking in how well they worked and how intuitive they were to operate. Skype offers a collaboration capability in conjunction with 3rd parties but it doesn't appear to be as tightly integrated as some of the others.
As I was reviewing the marketplace it became clear to me that all of these competitors were "good" competitors. In other words they were expanding the use of web based collaboration tools, offering a good value option to the hardware based systems. In an era of high gas prices getting the word out on these types of applications should help all market players. While some of the big names command a large market share (WebEx, Microsoft) it is interesting to see the products of smaller players and how they have successfully met a market niche. Sales strategies vary from the high end marketing that Cisco and Microsoft can provide, to the web based search marketing that the smaller players use (along with word of mouth). One of the biggest selling factors in my opinion would be getting free meeting invitees to experience a product and want to buy it to host meetings themselves.
