Adobe Connect Blog

Randy Chapman, vice president at Unum, recently talked to us about how the workplace benefits provider uses Adobe Connect to keep customers and employees up to date on benefit programs.

Chapman says, “Adobe Connect offers more advanced capabilities like screen-sharing, the ability to upload and share large files, and live chat pods for ongoing dialogue. Add to that the ability to set up a web camera for an instant one-to-one, and the solution is a complete end-to-end platform for dynamic online meetings.”

Check out the full story about how Unum uses the solution for its interactive training platform that reaches large audiences and distributes benefit program information that can be easily updated as rules, regulations, and laws evolve.

It’s not hard to understand why more organizations are looking to eLearning to help reduce the costs and lost productivity associated with travel for sales training. What comes as a surprise to many though is how expensive and time consuming it can be to create great eLearning content. It typically requires the involvement of subject matter experts, developers, artists, training managers, IT and more.

In the video below, I show a different approach. Rapid sales training combines the ability to very quickly create on-demand content with live virtual classrooms that provide a collaborative and engaging environment for students.

Hello! Michael Londgren here. I look after product marketing for Adobe Connect at the company. Checking in today about the 2010 Gartner, Inc. “Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing”.

As we announced in late November, Adobe was positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of the research report. We were one of 15 vendors evaluated in the report.

Of those vendors positioned in the Leaders Quadrant, David Mario Smith of Gartner wrote in the report:

“Vendors in the Leaders Quadrant have achieved significant market share while demonstrating an ability to respond to customers’ needs. Leaders have robust, scalable products with a wide range of features, a large installed base, acceptable financial performance and good distribution. Leaders are doing well today and are prepared for the future.”

We encourage you to check out the complete report for yourself here (.pdf).

And you can learn more about Adobe Connect here.

Cheers,

Michael

Votes have been cast and the results are in – we’re thrilled that Adobe Connect has won both the Best Web Seminar and Best Virtual Classroom categories in this year’s Best of Elearning! awards program.

Best of Elearning! recognition is particularly noteworthy because nominations and winners are entirely determined by the readers of Elearning! magazine – executives and business managers engaged in the areas of enterprise learning and workforce technology.

Nominations and voting were conducted online during August and September. Given both the quality of competition and quantity of nominations – this year featured 1,730 nominations, covering 37 companies and 67 products – we’re thankful to all of you who took the time to vote in support of Adobe Connect!

You can read more about all the award winners, including us, on the Elearning! site here.

And if you’re not already following us on Twitter, check us out @AdobeConnect.

 By Vincent Toesca, Group Product Manager, Adobe Connect

 Almost a year ago, I was discussing in another blog post the ascent of video as a way to enrich interpersonal communications.

This vision is increasingly becoming reality– at home and in the office. There’s not a day passing by without a new announcement around new video or “HD” capabilities by software vendors. What does it mean exactly for those in charge of selecting conferencing solutions? And how fast and how far will these new advancements reach everyday corporate users?

Removing complexity to drive usage

Videoconferencing has been characterized by complex endpoints and obscure acronyms (ISDN, VNOC, MPLS, QoS etc.) that have deterred quite a lot of casual users. No wonder that the utilization rate of these systems is typically less than 5% on a daily basis (source: Gartner, 2010). They also remain chiefly closed-loop systems, with more than 90% of all videoconferencing taking place among endpoints in the same enterprise But while these paltry numbers would give organizations little incentive to add more cost, risk and complexity to grow their video network, recent trends have marked a shift in the fortunes of videoconferencing.

Increasing reach even more than quality

The focus is moving from pure video quality to user experience, with an emphasis on reach and simplicity. The broader availability of camera-equipped devices and the popularization of online video through consumer services are reshaping the landscape. Here are a few usage and technological factors that are involved in this change:

• Software-based vs room-based: the dichotomy between VTC solutions (an expensive combination of endpoints, room systems, MCUs and services) and software-only video services is dissipating, with a gradual convergence of quality, and a faster expansion of the latter.  Meeting attendees who cannot reach a room and who are external to the organizations can participate from desktop- or web-based clients, with quality up to and including HD.
• Quality and bandwidth optimization: new IP video codecs (such as H.264) have dramatically improved video quality, without increasing bandwidth consumption. That is a prerequisite for IT departments, still wary of potential bandwidth overuse on their network. They also enable an experience that is rich and lifelike enough to endear end-users, who expect the fidelity of what they receive and broadcast to be high-quality and compelling. 
• Streaming and delivery: videoconferencing has moved almost completely to IP; all new video endpoints are IP-capable. But the coexistence of different protocols for establishing sessions (H.323, SIP), and the disparities in how well they allow video streams to traverse network firewalls, proxies and NAT, have constrained most organizations to use videoconferencing only internally. This is changing with the standardization on more firewall-friendly technologies, such a SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), and the delivery of new video services over managed networks and using SIP trunks.

Fulfilling promises for end-users and administrators alike

With our new Adobe Connect 8 release (now generally available), we have put a specific emphasis on high-quality, hassle-free visual communications. Being the first webconferencing solution offering robust video capabilities, our product had set the pace for bringing new digital experiences and interactions to enterprise customers.

• Deliver from multiple sources: a key new feature of Adobe Connect 8 is the ability to acquire a video stream from a SIP-based room system and broadcast it to all meeting participants present in an Adobe Connect room. Individual participants can also broadcast their own video feed, captured from a webcam. This truly achieves the converge of video streams into one single software-based solution, delivered at an infinitesimal cost over existing network infrastructures. 
• Deliver across screens: Adobe Connect delivers rich video features based on benchmarks set by the conferencing industry. The next challenge will be to optimize the video quality and resolution based on the properties of the receiving devices and increase video portability.  Beyond conventional desktops, the fast-growing penetration of smartphones and tablets with new form factors (e.g. front-facing cameras) and smaller footprint will drive this requirement. Adobe Connect has already embraced the need for accessing conferencing across screens, with mobile versions running on Google Android and Apple iOS; and other platforms are planned for the future.
• Deliver across network boundaries: here comes the foundational advantage of Adobe Connect, with the pervasive and firewall-friendly Adobe Flash platform. Battle-tested in the Internet space, where it supports about 80% of online videos, Adobe Flash provides a delivery mechanism that overcomes a lot of network barriers and improves the prospects for external calling. 

I once heard a senior executive joking about a telepresence meeting he had to attend: he spent over one hour driving to the venue where the telepresence meeting was hosted.  It was probably better than physically flying to the other coast for the meeting, but it certainly fell short of eliminating travel costs and travel time. With Adobe Connect 8 and its future iterations, we’re striving to enable a cost-efficient and user-friendly experience for video, universally delivered thanks to Adobe Flash.

By Vincent Toesca, Group Product Manager, Adobe Connect

Easy is hard. This seemingly contradictory statement could capture well our efforts to simplify our award-winning online meeting and training solution with the release of Adobe Connect 8.

While our previous versions had been praised for providing a sleeker and more user-friendly experience than comparable products, we spent a great deal of time meeting with our customers and listening to one simple but enlightening message they delivered to us: “the feature set of Adobe Connect is much richer than any other; we don’t need more, but better.”

Not more but better. Over the past months, we have worked intensively with Adobe’s user experience researchers, interface designers, engineers and, of course, existing Adobe Connect users to understand how we could improve user interactions and make our meeting interface even more intuitive, especially for casual users. The advent of consumer tools such as public instant messaging networks and IP-based phone-call services, and the smarter form factor of novel electronic devices have accustomed us to simplified digital experiences. We strived to remodel Adobe Connect along those lines, while maintaining our rich set of options for power users.   

Our new meeting user interface not only offers a more compelling design and fresher look but also achieves a better organization and more prominent display of important and frequently used controls and capabilities. Here are a few examples:

• Enhanced audio and video controls. These settings have been regrouped to be accessed from one central place. Now organized at the top of the meeting bar, they are more visible and easily accessible.
• Unified attendee management. All participant management functions can be executed from the Attendee pod, including breakout-out rooms. Participant role and rights can now be updated using drag and drop; a rollover menu enables participants to quickly initiate actions, such as private chats, with each other.
• Optimized screen use. The meeting interface rescales intelligently to provide optimum viewing based on each participant’s screen resolution. Presenters can also size their own version of the presenter-only area individually without impacting the view of other presenters.
• Improved accessibility. Navigation via keyboard and hot keys has been improved and major improvements have been achieved in screen reader compatibility with JAWS and Win-Eyes.
• Advanced chat. Text-based conversations within the meeting room have been reorganized into separate tabs for public and private conversations.
• Rich Notes pod. Rich formatting capabilities have been added in the Notes pod to facilitate the capture of notes and comments during collaborative meeting, save them as rich documents and send them by email after the meeting.
• Simplified Q&A pod. The submission and management of questions during webinar-like sessions has been consolidated into one single frame, with differentiated views for presenters and participants.
• Enhanced Whiteboard. New workflows, such as quickly adding text to custom shapes, have been added. The whiteboard can also be used in the overlay mode on top of a shared document to zoom and pan along with the document.

In this simplification process, we have made sure to preserve all the key workflows that Adobe Connect users have come to rely upon for their meeting and training needs. But overall, they are now easier to discover and use.

Not more but better, I wrote earlier. But a little more too, in this new release. New back-end capabilities, such as integration with videoconferencing systems, duplex universal voice and enhanced room access protection, are hallmark features of Adobe Connect 8. They enable our customers to leverage their existing investments in adjacent communications systems, such as audioconferencing and videoconferencing platforms, and provide their employees and partners with a more unified and coherent digital experience for collaboration.

In future posts, my team and I will be glad to continue to walk you through the new benefits of Adobe Connect 8. We look forward to having you use our new version.  Our official trial will be available very soon, but if you’d like to get a sneak peek now – you are invited to sign up for a free 30-day account offered as part of our customer preview program. If you are a current customer, we have created the Adobe Connect 8 Migration Center  to help you prepare for the new version.  If you are a Hosted Services customer, we have a widget on that page that you can use to look up your anticipated upgrade date.

We hope you will enjoy Adobe Connect 8 with the same excitement and enthusiasm as we put into building it.

Since its wider adoption by enterprises and organizations of various sizes, Web conferencing has represented a quantum leap compared with traditional audio-only conference calls. The online meeting experience creates a new level of participant engagement by adding rich data sharing (screensharing, collaborative review of documents) and interactivity tools (chat, live surveys, etc.). Higher participant attention raises the productivity of online meetings, while the combination of live sessions and on-demand access to learning contents increases the retention rate of training sessions administered through tools like Connect Pro.
Through periodic research interviews, we have found that many Connect Pro customers would characterize our solution as “the next best thing to a face-to-face meeting”. This is the result of constant innovation instilled into our product over seven releases to deliver a multi-dimensional environment.

While audio, text-based chat and data sharing are staples of web conferencing tools, video is the one dimension that has been relatively underutilized until now. Two major reasons explain this lower penetration: the slow proliferation of video devices, such as webcams, in the workplace, and the concern of systems administrators around bandwidth utilization. Another reason would be the earlier investment in room-based videoconferencing systems by corporations and the urge to use them as the primary conduit for visual communications, as a way to justify their high acquisition costs and the recurring expenses for servicing them.

From connecting rooms to connecting people

While room-based videoconferencing systems arguably provide good quality video, they have failed to do so in a scalable fashion, financially and operationally. Beyond the cost of installing and maintaining endpoints, IT/IS departments have realized that room-based systems are another complex layer to manage and to integrate with the rest of their communications infrastructure. On the other end, many corporate users often struggle with their sophisticated deployment and convoluted settings.

Leading vendors have recently touted a new generation of videoconferencing solutions, with “Telepresence”, emphasizing high quality at improved compression rates. However, these systems have not overcome the barriers that limit the widespread use of video: complex combination of hardware, software and additional room equipment; price points that make them an elitist solution and the privilege of a few. Finally they still follow the same metaphor consisting in connecting rooms, not users.

A study recently published by Gartner (November 10, 2009) portends that organizations are showing increased interest in video in general, and in video systems that are not bound to a room-centered experience in particular. They are pushing harder for desktop videoconferencing that has a lower cost structure, better reach and less dependence on appliances and infrastructure.

Seeing is believing

The video streaming capabilities provided by Connect Pro make it a strong substitute to supplant these systems down the road, and a much better fit for interpersonal communications. As webcams and built-in video devices are making strong headways into corporate environments, video will become the next frontier of web conferencing systems.

Release after release, and ahead of all competing products, Connect Pro team has supported and improved live video streaming to create more lifelike web meeting experiences and foster ad-hoc collaboration. Seeing the presenters of a webinar, or the instructor conducting a training session over Connect Pro, helps make a more impactful and lasting impression on the target audience.

Built on the Adobe Flash platform, Connect Pro leverages the leading streaming technologies developed by Adobe, currently used to deliver approximately 80 percent of Web video worldwide. Adobe Flash has been designed to provide high-quality streaming, at optimized bitrates, across firewalls. Bandwidth efficiency mitigates administrators’ network-related concerns while cross-firewall delivery extends video meetings to outside participants.

Mass adoption of video by enterprise customers is occurring gradually, but its pace is accelerating. It will increasingly rely on fully software-based videoconferencing solutions that offer lower-cost alternatives to legacy video systems with roughly equivalent levels of quality. With the ubiquitous Flash platform, Connect Pro possesses a foundational asset that we are leveraging as we evolve our webconferencing solution. Stay tuned for richer and more engaging interpersonal and collaborative experiences.

By Vincent Toesca