PC World (January 2005)

Keeping your distance

You no longer need to limit your meetings to a room or an auditorium. With CloudMeeting, the debate ebbs and flows easily over the Internet....

By Daniel dos Santos

Meetings with branch offices or business partners in other cities or countries are vital to the success of many businesses, but represent elevated travel expenses to get there, hours lost in transit, and time if not days away from the office when you do arrive. A new, more efficient alternative is the new CloudMeeting internet video conferencing and collaboration service, which is geared to business professionals interested in working productively and securely from anywhere on the planet.

With integrated IP video, audio and application sharing, the virtual meetings don't differ much from regular, physical get-togethers. To use the service each participant needs to download the small CloudMeeting client software from their web site. A microphone and webcam are necessary to take advantage of all the features, but you can participate in any meeting without them, observing and listening to the others and making your own contributions via the integrated text chat.

After installing the program and logging on the first time, you need to invite your colleagues, partners, suppliers or clients to your private CloudMeeting contact list. After they accept this invitation, by clicking on a name you start calls or send secure IMs. The service includes application sharing, which allows any participant to spontaneously present, for example, PowerPoint slides at any point during the meeting.

Many of the features offered by CloudMeeting remind one of free offerings available from the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo. The difference, however, is in crucial details like security and scale of participants. All communications via CloudMeeting carry 128-bit encryption via SSL, and a video conference can include up to 200 persons or PCs, all with full-duplex voice and all sending video.

In PC World's tests, CloudMeeting demonstrated good audio quality, and one interesting aspect of the technology is that the video speed varied individually in real time, adapting to the connection speed of each participant. Minimum bandwidth necessary is as low as a 56 Kbps dial-up connection, although the frame speed of the image at that velocity was more akin to a revolving photo. For a decent video experience and fast application sharing, we recommend a minimum 100 Kbps connection.