Forrester Report On Webcasting Available

Forrester Research just released a new report by Claire Schooley on the use of webcasts in large organizations. It's a rather high level introduction to the topic, going all the way back to the differences between a webcast and a collaborative web conference.

Forrester interviewed 13 vendors for the report: Accordent Technoloies, Adobe Systems, Avacast, Interactive Video Technologies (IVT), Media Publisher, ON24, Online Video Service, Reflect Systems, Sonic Foundry, Streamlogics, TalkPoint Communications, Vcall, and Vodium.

The report costs $380 if you don't already have a Forrester contract covering this research area. It is 13 pages long. I obviously can't go into too much detail about the content, as I would be violating copyright and giving away information they are selling. A lot of the content concerns definitions and basic background, such as a simplified example of what a webcast interface might look like to a viewer. That seems like something you could get pretty quickly by simply attending any random webcast promoted on the Internet!

The report goes into more detail on the subject of hosted versus on-premise installed software for producing webcasts, but doesn't get into the nitty gritty of associated costs and technical considerations when going the on-premise route. There are some large matrix tables of features and services offered by various technology vendors.

Interestingly (and refreshingly), Forrester offers a money-back guarantee on the order page. If you are not completely satisfied with your research document for any reason, you can return it for a full refund within three weeks of your online purchase. That's risky business practice for a product that can be read for the information value and then returned with no loss to the customer, but it shows good integrity by Forreseter.

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