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In order to keep pace in the rapidly changing world of Web conferencing, Intranets.com is announcing enhancements to its conferencing offerings.

Intranets.com bills itself as the largest on-demand collaboration service on the Internet. Its hosted collaboration products are used by more than 8,000 customers with more than 250,000 users, mostly in the United States and Japan.

In February, Intranets.com unveiled its Web conferencing feature. In the spring, an enhanced calendar application was added. Now, after listening to customer feedback and gauging the Web conferencing market, the company is beefing up its product.

"It was our first foray into real-time collaboration," said Patrick Moran, director of strategic marketing for Intranets.com. The company's previous offerings focused on asynchronous collaboration. Once the Web conferencing was launched, Moran said several hundred accounts signed up in first few months.

Intranets.com partnered with Netspoke for its conferencing application, which branded the product as part of the Intranets.com suite. In addition to Web and audio conferencing, it included slide sharing, application sharing, whiteboarding, live chat, polling, and Q&A features.

By popular demand, Intranets.com is adding the ability to record and playback conferences. The company will also be offering video, which was lacking from the previous conferencing product. For those who feel the need to secure their conferences, SSL encryption will also be an option.

The new and improved Web conferencing application from Intranets.com lets users record conferences for download in either Windows Player or Real Media formats.

Moran only recommends the encryption for customers that really need it. "The majority of Web conferences out there don't need it," he said. Nevertheless, the encryption is available to Web conferencing subscribers who want to use it for an addition $150 per month.

Intranets.com Web conferencing costs $149.95 for 25 simultaneous users. It is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The recording and playback will cost users the price of hosting the conference. The addition of video is added is done at no charge. Fourteen-day trial accounts will be available from Intranets.com.

According to Moran, usage of Intranets.com's Web conferencing application is split among the company's niche small business customers and the larger enterprises, such The Home Depot, General Motors, and NASA that use Intranets.com as well.

The document manager application remains the most popular in the Intranets.com suite, followed by the group calendar and scheduling.

The Web conferencing space is seeing a number of announcements concerning new products. Macromedia announced new pricing plans to make its Breeze Flash-based conferencing product more appealing to small businesses. Viack is pushing its VIA3 conferencing solution as a secure application and has the FIPS 140-2 security certification to prove it.

There are any number of catalysts for these shifts in the market. Microsoft, which gets everyone's attention, is pushing its LiveMeeting application as part of the new Office suite and Windows Server 2003. Reluctance to travel for cost-cutting and security reasons remains an issue. Web conferencing technology has also finally reached the point where it is accurate and of a quality that puts it on par with telephone and in-person collaboration.

"Certainly, 9-11 changed things. People didn't want to travel so much," Moran said. "But the technology is finally ready for prime time. That's why we waited until we did."

Live, streaming video is a new addition to the Web conferencing application at Intranets.com.