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Wainhouse Research Announces New Web Conferencing Benchmarking Program to Track User Preferences, Trends, Brand Awareness and Growth
First WebMetrics Report Indicates Shifting Priorities As Users Mature
May 17, 2004, Brookline MA - Recognizing the growing importance of web conferencing to business, government and other organizations, Wainhouse Research today announced the initiation of its new WebMetrics benchmarking research program for the web conferencing industry and released key findings from the first WebMetrics quarterly benchmarking study.
"Our initial report has uncovered some interesting twists and turns in which web conferencing user practices and preferences are changing as their adoption shifts from individual departments to an enterprise-wide business tool," said Andy Nilssen, Senior Analyst and Partner, Wainhouse Research.
Some of the findings that confirm this shift include a change in user preference among various web conferencing deployment models. In the benchmarking survey, almost 12% of respondents indicated that they intended to shift from use of externally hosted web conferencing service providers over the next 12 months to use of managed services (74.5 percent of externally hosted users will decrease to 64.7 percent). The shift primarily will be to use of managed services, the use of which among respondents will increase from 8.8 percent to 18.6 percent. The number of those who own and operate their own web conferencing servers will remain fairly flat at roughly one-quarter of all respondents.
"We find it significant that almost 12 percent of respondents plan to migrate from externally hosted services to a managed service in which the technology is behind their firewall, but outsource its operation and maintenance. With this and the projected flat growth in self-hosting, we are seeing the beginning of a trend in which buyers are becoming cautious of operating their own web conferencing servers," said Nilssen. "The move to self-hosting may be entering a brief respite as buyers struggle to understand its true impact on their IT and telecom organizations."
The first WebMetrics quarterly report has also identified an emerging trend in which there is a growing use of web conferencing for workgroup collaboration.
Survey respondents selected "teaming" for internal workgroup collaboration as the number one application for web conferencing. E-learning came in as a close third, although many in the industry might have thought this to be the leading application.
"The selection of teaming as the number one web conferencing application and the growing use of "ad hoc" scheduling of web conferences by WebMetrics survey respondents reinforces the coming-of-age of the use of web conferencing for real-time work collaboration rather than the more traditional applications for training and sales presentations," said Nilssen.
The quarterly benchmarking study also reveals that WebEx and Microsoft remain the most recognized and strongest brands in the web conferencing industry with unaided awareness among survey respondents at 66 percent and 64 percent respectively. Following this top tier is a second tier in the low double-digits that include Polycom, Raindance, and Centra. Many of these vendors scored higher in aided awareness categories.
The WebMetrics Q1 2004 Report, published in collaboration with Oregon-based DecisionCast, is designed to provide a better understanding of brand attitudes and how certain web conferencing features are prioritized among buyers and users.
An annual subscription for the WebMetrics report series is available as well as copies of each individual quarterly report. Information about the report series including sample questions and a fax-back order form are available on the web at www.wainhouse.com/webmetrics .
Web conferencing users and buyers who complete the surveys receive a brief high-level summary of the findings and are entered for drawings. For more information about signing up to receive invitations to future WebMetrics surveys, please visit www.wainhouse.com/webmetrics .
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