Large enterprises have realized enormous productivity gains and hard cost savings in recent years by investing in sophisticated web conferencing solutions. Some have reliably claimed to be saving millions of dollars per quarter, in hard costs, based on reduction in travel and long distance phone charges. This is a compelling arugument in today's cost conscious environment.

An explosion of solutions are appearing -- all sharing the basic metaphor of web conferencing -- but the spectrum of offerings is becoming very broad. In the past few weeks I have looked into some exciting alternatives -- including solutions from eDial, Viack, Lightsocket and WiredRed -- defining the state of this very hot and crowded market.

Lightsocket's Collaborator is a plug-in for AOL Instant Messenger that provides an ad hoc web conferencing capability. Collaborator supports sharing of four applications: Internet Explorer, Excel, Powerpoint, and Word.

The model of use is strongly IM-oriented: You and I are IMing, I suggest we should look at a Word doc, and we then enter a shared editing session. Note that both (or multiple) participants have to install the Collaborator software. In a recent demo session with Lightsocket's CTO, Michael Ghebreyesus, the software worked as advertised. We co-browsed the web, jointly edited a Word doc, and Michael gave a few slides of a Powerpoint presentation. Very cool. And very affordable. Lightsocket is charging only $5.99/mo for the service, per user. And while the technology lacks more sophisticated features -- such as meeting moderation, scheduling, or audio/video streaming -- the package is likely to work well for ad hoc and small group collaboration.

eDial's Instant Collaboration System extends the core web conferencing paradigm to incorporate telephony integration as well as instant messaging-based presence. As a result, ICS provides a nearly seamless transition from messaging to sharing a documents and conferring via voice or text. The interface provides the presence and availability of users relative to IM and phone. eDial acts as the enterprise glue that pulls together the disparate communication media of telephone and computers into a single collaborative fabric. The solution is geared toward ad hoc and spontaneous sorts of collaboration, and in that regard has similarities to Lightsocket Collaborator, but the nature of its integration with telephone systems positions it as an enterprise-grade solution rather than the SOHO market.

Viack's Via3 is an enterprise web conferencing solution, one geared to ad hoc web conferences but with somewhat more support for larger conferences, as well. Along with instant messaging and presence, Via3 incorporates sophisticated meeting moderation and application sharing capabilities. The system is based around secure 'file cabinets' -- shared repositories of information -- that conferees share. Via3 supports streaming audio and video, for a rich conference experience. The product's core differentiation relative to other enterprise-scale web conferencing solutions is security -- all information in the system is encrypted end-to-end -- so Via3 will appeal to those whose security is absolutely essential.

WiredRed recently announced ePop Web Conferencing, extending the company's flagship ePop instant messaging architecture. Again, a product geared to ad hoc and spontaneous web conferencing, ePop Web Conferencing includes application and document sharing, as well as desktop sharing, and includes audio and video support. The product is well-suited to companies that want a flexible and easy-to-manage solution for ad hoc, small team web conferencing.

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The proliferation of new web conferencing solutions has caused me to buy a webcam, and I am now trying to take advantage of web conferencing tools at every opportunity. I am a convert. It is much easier to review a document outline in real time with a partner than to cycle through five emails. And with the exploding variety of options, there is a solution out there for everyone.