LONDON -- Data Connection today announced the latest version of its MeetingServer web conferencing solution. MeetingServer gives Service Providers the capability to host their own self-branded web conferencing service, rather than reselling the services of a third-party provider, and is the result of Data Connection’s 10 years of experience at the heart of the conferencing industry.

“Service Providers – whether they are Audio Conferencing SPs, Enterprise Portal providers, general ISPs, or even ILECs and CLECs – desperately need to increase the value of their hosted service offerings,” said Graeme MacArthur, General Manager of Data Connection’s Internet Applications Group. “Web conferencing is an ideal way of doing this, but many SPs worry about the resource costs and time-to-market of deploying an in-house solution. MeetingServer is aimed squarely at addressing those concerns – by providing a high quality, competitive solution, packaged for rapid and easy customization and deployment, supported by an outstanding engineering team with a world-class reputation.”

Frank J. Michela, Vice President at Connect-Us, backs up these claims. “We wanted a web conferencing solution that we could host and manage ourselves, with our own branding and look-and-feel. MeetingServer gives us exactly what we were looking for, and the new V2.1 release will provide our end users with some great new services.”MeetingServer provides highly featured, reliable conferencing capabilities for both small and large conferences. Its intuitive GUI, which has received praise throughout the industry for its simplicity and ease of use, presents access to a complete range of conferencing and application sharing capabilities, and with this latest release now includes voting and polling functions and high-performance presentation up/download. It is easily integrated with audio bridges, and the UI is fully customizable to allow rebranding.Gary Anderson, President and CEO of Netbriefings, confirms that integration is straightforward. “Data Connection has been great to work with. Integrating MeetingServer with our existing meeting management software has been easy, and Data Connection’s superb support team has been very responsive in giving us all the help we need.”

MeetingServer uses a reservationless scheduling model, where participants are invited to the meeting using a simple click-to-invite function. This increases user take-up, because conferences can easily be set up on-demand without requiring pre-configuration. Several other Service Providers, including British Telecom, have already licensed MeetingServer technology. It is also OEMed by equipment vendors and conferencing providers including Latitude Communications (now owned by Cisco), Spectel and Documentum.

Data Connection Ltd. (DCL)