By: Lisa Moore

The Internet has helped corporate business to grow by leaps and bounds. Thanks to virtual trade and online tools like web conferencing, businesses are finding it easier than ever to contact clients, provide services and turn a profit.

In theory, meetings and conferences conducted over the Internet are a great concept. Web conferencing allows corporations to save a bundle on business travel, while keeping out of town and international clients and employees well engaged and up to speed. The drawback however, is that once this concept is placed into practice, many small businesses find that most of the web conferencing tools available are too costly to install. The systems can involve complicated set up procedures and the programs can be hard to master, making the entire process a frustrating experience.

There are affordable web conferencing options. Aside from the products offered by industry giants like WebEx, Macromedia, and Microsoft, there are other developers out there that are dedicated to providing you with affordable web conferencing solutions. It’s important to note that there is a difference between “affordable” and “cheap”. Many of the cheap web conferencing products are the market are bootleg copies of successful commercial products, or simple packages of the bare essentials of a decent conferencing tool.

One company dedicated to offering affordable web conferencing is Citrix Online, now featuring its new GoToMeeting software application. GoToMeeting is an affordable web conferencing solution hosted on a server that is managed and controlled by Citrix Online. You might recognize the Citrix Online name, as they are the people who launched the extraordinarily effective and simple GoToMyPC, a program allowing easy access to your PC from any Web browser. Using basically the same technology, Citrix Online’s GoToMeeting allows businesses of all size the opportunity to utilize a web conferencing tool that is as affordable as it is simple to use.

Affordable web conferencing can mean the difference between success and failure for groups that want to do business on a global level, but don’t have access to a worldly budget.

Most people use affordable web conferencing software for presentations, collaborations and product and software demonstrations. Aside from these basic uses, a great many potential applications remain largely untapped.

A study conducted by the Yankee Group found that 89 percent of affordable web conferencing solutions are used for application sharing, 12 percent for annotation, and four percent for white boarding. These figures show that the wide array of applications offered by affordable web conferencing remain untouched. These systems can also be used to assist in training sessions, facilitate distance learning, present ideas to board members, and basically conduct any area of business normally performed in an average boardroom.

Brian Donahoo, Senior Vice-President of Products and Services Citrix Online says, “When it comes to web conferencing, less is more. We’ve stripped out the non-essential bells and whistles, making GoToMeeting easier to use.” The simplicity of these affordable web conferencing products allows for more customer confidence, as users master the service quickly, become frustrated with the product less often, and ultimately use the product more frequently.

If you have a small business with plans to be a big success, try affordable web conferencing solutions by makers like Citrix Online. A world of possibilities is waiting.

About the author: Lisa Moore writes for several online magazines, including http://tenip.com and http://pobod.com.

• About Lisa Moore