With the recent downturn in the global economy, companies have upped their focus on increasing business productivity and cost efficiency and Web conferencing is gaining popularity.

The largest markets for Web conferencing services are in the United Kingdom, France and Germany due to the large number of global companies in Europe, developed infrastructure and the awareness they place on Web conferencing.

While web conferencing technology grows and becomes more involved in organizations in these countries, end users are interested in putting solutions into play to integrate with other software-based productivity applications.

Frost & Sullivan reports in their European Web Conferencing Services Market research, that the total European Web conferencing services and software market reached revenues of $248.0 million in 2009, growing at a rate of 18.3 per cent from the previous year.

Furthermore, Frost & Sullivan estimates the market is likely to grow over the next six years to reach $1.01 billion in 2015, which is a compound annual growth rate of 26.4 percent.

Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst, Iwona Petruczynik, says currently vendors are making progress in the integration of Web conferencing with commonly used business applications and processes.

Many of the benefits of hosting appeal to customers that are using Web conferencing for a select few business applications, such as low up-front costs, higher reliability and being able to free up internal support staff.

The UK Web conferencing services market is the most experienced in the region. It is beginning to experience increasing pricing pressures caused by the changing pricing models and the rising number of low-priced solutions. The next few years pose many potential growth opportunities for larger economies in Western Europe to bring Web conferencing to a position of readiness.