Internet meetings

The world today is a global village. It is no longer necessary, or even possible, for all the employees of any given organization to come together for an offline meeting when an Internet meeting is possible! Yes, you heard right. The Internet, as we know it has already changed the way we communicate and conduct business. And now, Internet meetings are not just a remote possibility – they are a reality of business today.

Imagine a major software company that has several branch offices in the US of A and elsewhere in the world. Such an organization would have scores of employees spread across the globe. Now more often than not, these employees would need to get in touch with others in a different time zone, locations or even country to discuss matters of critical importance. In such cases, an e-mail would be useless due to the time delays in responding and making oneself understood precisely. However, the miracle of video conferencing has been harness to make Internet meetings possible.

What exactly is an internet meeting? And how is it different from traditional videoconferencing that has been around for a while. Simply put, an internet meeting is a coming together of people from different locations around the world to meet in cyberspace and talk. In video conferencing, there is a lot of reliance on expensive equipment like cameras, communications lines and display devices. But in an Internet meeting, this is not the case. Internet meetings, as the name reveals, are meetings conducted like traditional video conferencing, but over the internet. With bandwidth getting better nowadays and the possibility of streaming millions of bytes of data effortlessly across the net, online video and audio conferences are distinctly possible.

Why use Internet meetings? Any organization that has its staff spread out across the globe, benefits from Internet meetings. Lets say your company has its headquarters in New York, but the financial officer is based out of Hong Kong and your clients are concentrated in Germany. Now if people from these diverse geographic locations want to discuss something, they can conveniently set up an Internet meeting. Not only will this Internet meeting enable them to talk to and see one another, it will also help them to exchange files and applications, chat with one another, share their contacts and also remotely share their desktops. That is the power of an Internet meeting for you! And in the process, your organization saves on expensive telecommunication costs, saves a lot of man-hours that would have been otherwise wasted and gets the job done. Everyone benefits from an Internet meeting.

Several large corporations have their own proprietary software for Internet Meetings. Microsoft’s Netmeeting is one such popular applications. And there are thousands of small and medium enterprise companies like Marratech, Voxwire, Skype and others who have their own version of an Internet meeting software. If you haven’t already done so, you too should experience the world of Internet meetings. Trust me, it will change the way you view meetings forever!