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Multiperson videoconferencing doesn't have to be hard or difficult, at all. In fact, says Gary Deitz, senior product manager for Elluminate, all you need is an $80 webcam and the new Elluminate VCS.

The Accidental Videoconferencer

Elluminate is better known to education customers, although that could soon change. The 140-person company focuses on the K-20 market, but it's also used by major tech firms including Sun and IBM. Ten years ago Elluminate began as a tutoring company, providing distance learning and remote tutoring. But a funny thing happened, Deitz says: the company's software became more popular than the lessons themselves, and so a new business was born.

The reason Elluminate's software took off is because it works over extremely low bandwidth, including dial-up connections. Anywhere from 2 to 100 people can collaborate using tools such as white boards, live video, and live audio. Elluminate Live, the company's main offering, is also perfectly suited for people with physical challenges: it supports closed captioning and allows for alternate input methods for those who can't use a keyboard and mouse.

The Birth of VCS

As strong as Elluminate Live is, it doesn't offer traditional videoconferencing, so that's where the recently launched Elluminate VCS comes in. Videoconferencing systems can be expensive to set up and difficult for non-techie people to run. Often, the person running the conference needs to have an IT person set up the hardware and software each time, including the multi-point conferencing software, the scheduling hardware, and the firewall hardware.

But Elluminate VCS offers a much simpler experience. The product offers 30 frame-per-second video, high-quality audio, and low latency, plus setting up a conference is fast and easy, bringing videoconferencing to the desktop.

VCS offers full-screen, high-resolution video, which is important for the educational markets it targets. If children are the audience, they learn better when they can see full facial expressions. Theater and music programs require detailed views of the works being discussed. Elluminate has spoken to its customers and learned that many didn't go with other videoconferencing solutions because they didn't support full-screen video.

Collaboration tools are present in VCS, but they're secondary to the video performance. However, you'll still get white boards, application sharing, and file transfer. Elluminate is targeting large institutions, whether educational, governmental, or commercial.

Ease of use should attract many to Elluminate VCS. You don't need a studio to use it, just a desktop webcam. If your cam can create 30fps video with a resolution of 640x480 pixels, you're all set.

Elluminate VCS is an installed solution, and it comes with the necessary server and firewall hardware. It works with Windows systems only, at the moment. Deitz couldn't say when Macintosh support would be available.

Pricing includes the server and customer premises deployment, and seat costs go by concurrent users. You don't assign licenses to individual users, but use them for whomever needs to conference. You could work with 100 people today and then use the licenses for a different group of 100 the next day.

If your company provides distance learning and you're looking for an affordable, easy solution, be sure to look at Elluminate VCS.

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