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Second Day of San Francisco Collaboration Summit
As promised, I'll go into a little more depth about the second day of the conference, and what I took away from the event. Several excellent workshops were given by different suppliers, I attended the Polycom and ThinkEngine networks to learn more about their offerings, and about their companies. I came away with several ideas of additional products and services that we can offer to our clients, as well as some general time frames to make these happen. One of the most intriguing topics of the day was based around how universities and other places of higher learning are making the foray into the collaboration world. The concept of these organizations being able to offer truly interactive learning experiences for their students in a virtual environment is an incredible opportunity for a company that takes the right approach. This is a very quickly growing market segment, and one that our company will be gearing up for earnestly as the next few months come along. The age old question of "What is the future of conferencing? And where is it going?" is always a hot topic for service providers like myself. Needless to say, the importance of providing top-notch levels of customer service and a truly "human" experience is going to be even more important in the future as potential clients literally have hundreds of options to choose from. Whether to purchase premise-based equipment or an outsourced service provider is always an important decision. Then, on top of that you have several hybrid solutions to choose from such as having the equipment on premise, but having it managed by the outsourced service provider. The next few years will be very exciting indeed. The technology exists today to truly recreate the experience of being "right there, next to the person". The question in most cases is whether or not the cost justifies the results. Signing off for now, and going to head to another session. Reno Provine
President
Great America Networks Conferencing
www.ganconference.com
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Latest Press Release
Finally. Real Business-level Conferencing Available in Second Life!!!
| A new full service audio conferencing solution has arrived in Second Life. Great America Network Conferencing (GANC) unveiled its full service conference packages to companies or groups that want to hold large meetings in Second Life. |
| Source: Great America Networks Conferencing, LLC
May 27, 2007 18:40:14 |
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Great America Networks Conferencing (PRLog.Org) – Is your organization ready to experience the transition from a life of constant travel and the associated expenses associated with attending meetings across the globe? Are your employees constantly flying throughout the country, spending an hour to get to the airport, an hour waiting for their flight, 5 hours on the plane, another hour to get to their hotel room and yet another hour to travel to the meeting location, to then sit in a meeting room with colleagues or clients for a ONE HOUR MEETING? If this is a frequent scenario for your organization, then you will be glad to know that there is an alternative. Collaboration in a Virtual World environment will allow your organization to achieve all of the results from that same face-to-face meeting, without all of the wasted time, effort, and expense. Imagine this scenario: Your marketing team is getting ready to roll out a test concept of their new product. The Marketing Director calls for a product assessment meeting to be held. Each member of the team is told to meet in "Morocco". The members go to our website and sign on to Second Life directly from our home page. After signing in, each member is taken directly to a "Tutorial Island" that provides them with a detailed walk-through of how to coordinate and interact in their new environment. The training will consist of how to use their interface, what an avatar is and how to change their look and feel, how to move throughout the world of Second Life and much more. After the initial orientation session, each team member is directed to his or her conference facility. Upon arrival a fully trained and knowledgeable Meeting Consultant greets them. The Meeting Consultant's responsibility is to ensure that each team member is capable of participating in his or her meeting to the fullest extent. This includes providing them with detailed instructions on how to access the audio portion of their conference either through an audio stream, or via telephone conference and Toll-Free number, as well as how to view and access any documentation or presentations on their web browser or in-world. So, what do we have? A fully interactive team meeting, a 3D Rendering of the new product to be launched, a power point presentation, an aesthetically pleasing visual layout, crystal clear audio conferencing powered by millions of dollars in audio conferencing equipment, an audio stream through the PC speakers for attendees who only want to "listen" to the conference, and the capability to collaborate in real time with various documents and products. A fully trained Meeting Consultant that will provide a multitude of services facilitates all of this. Audio Conferencing - done through our state-of-the-art Compunetix bridging platform with the capability to bridge up to 5,000 participants at once. Crystal clear voice quality on a platform that is designed for 24/7 uptime and reliability on a fully redundant carrier network in a co-location facility in downtown Chicago IL that provides for emergency backup power, multiple power grids, multiple carrier egress and much more. Web Conferencing - we will allow you to project your PowerPoint presentations, documents and applications into the Second Life world, while also allowing your participants to choose to work in world, or directly through their Internet Browser, based on their personal preference. You can do PowerPoint presentations, desktop sharing, application sharing and much more with our proprietary web conferencing platform. Conferencing Venue - We currently offer a Moroccan based theme that will literally "wow" your conference participants. The attention to detail is amazing, and your conference participants will be talking about your event for months to come. You truly have to see this venue to believe it. In addition to that, we provide a fully staffed Meeting Consultant platform that provides your participants with a one of a kind service. Think of them as a concierge for your conferencing event. To wrap everything up with a tidy bow, we also offer a single sign on for your participants directly from our website, they are then taken directly to our own personal tutorial sim where they are given an in-depth tutorial walk through on how to use Second Life that will knock their socks off. As you can see, there is no comparison to our services and offerings in the entire world of Second Life or the Real World for that matter. If you are a business who is trying to conduct more effective meetings, or trying to bring your business into Second Life, that we truly are the partner who can make that happen for you.
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How to choose your conferencing service provider
We know that you have many choices when it comes to conferencing and collaboration products and services. You can do a google search for "conference call" and you will have literally 50 companies competing to earn your business. This doesn't include the big boys that do their sales through their large direct sales arms. While this is excellent news for companies that use conferencing services, I would like to tell you a little about why we feel that we are the best option for you. There are basically 3 tiers of conferencing companies: Tier 1: Large providers - IE Intercall, Genesys, Premiere Pros: Name recognition, lots of employees and locations, generally speaking their products work Cons: Typically 3 times more expensive, someone has to pay for all of those employees and locations, and it is very difficult to be treated with any sense of individuality when you are one of tens of thousands of accounts Infrastructure: Usually state of the art and extensive build outs, however they usually are always fighting with the struggle of migrating from older technology to new Pricing: Expensive, Like a 5 star restaurant but without the 5 star service
Service: Marginal at best unless your account bills more then $25k per month Tier 2: Middle providers - IE Budget Conferencing, A+ Conferencing, our company of course Pros: Some name recognition (some of these companies have been around for more then a decade), tight control over employee numbers and locations, products typically work very well (they must to keep their clients) Very good pricing (but smart enough not to lose money) Cons: May be a struggle to find them initially, usually very small direct sales forces and get business by word of mouth and referrals Infrastructure: Excellent, New Technology, Well Managed Pricing: Extremely Competitive Service: Usually Outstanding (they must earn and keep your business each and every month with the big boys direct sales staffs calling you every month to get you to switch over to them) Tier 3: Bargain Basement - You've seen their ads on google - They went out and bought a single VOIP Conferencing bridge at 1/5 the cost of the top two providers and are giving away their service. Typically defined as no infrastructure, no service, sometimes you don't even have a way to call them. Pros: Cheap Cons: Everything else Infrastructure: Cheap VOIP bridge with poor bandwidth management. Leads to dropped calls, garbled conversations and poor quality in general Service: Usually none to speak of. Mainly email communication and automated forms. Almost always require credit cards and prepayments Pricing: Dirt Cheap - (sometimes they are even losing money to try and get into the game) What does this say to you? Hopefully it shows you that the technology and infrastructure behind a conferencing company is vital to your success. We all know what going the cheap route does for you, and while you may save a few dollars by going with a Tier 3 provider, I hope you truly do understand exactly what you're getting. On the other side of the coin, if you're with a Tier I provider, we can assure you that you are paying more and receiving less. To take advantage of our significant investment in technology infrastructure, and be treated like the valuable client that you are, call us now, or go here and sign up today. You won't regret it. For a limited time only, we will provide you with 250 free audio conferencing minutes and a 30 day free web trial, just for giving us the chance to earn your business. What do you have to lose? We save our clients an average of 20% and in some cases that exceeds 1000%. Find out more about us at www.ganconference.com or call immediately and talk to a real person at 1-877-GET-GAN1. Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed on every call, or the call is FREE! Let us get you signed up and saving money today.
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Collaboration Summit in San Francisco
We made the journey from Chicago Illinois over to San Francisco California to attend the Wainhouse Collaboration Summit. The event so far has been excellent, with several hundred participants in attendance, ranging from smaller companies like mine, all the way up to the big boys such as Microsoft and Cisco. The theme of course is conferencing and collaboration and there are many thoughts on this topic to be sure. The first day was focused on the videoconferencing industry, and featured several vendors with outstanding technology and tightly integrated user interfaces. The products ranged from standard definition video feeds to High Definition Video and of course everything in between. Over the next few years, the world will definitely become a smaller place is videoconferencing becomes more mainstream. The technology behind these products is exemplary and the price points are going to allow for some serious mainstream penetration in the near future. After the first day and a half of the event, there have been several interesting topics covered, including the potential future of China in the industry, as well as the continued growth of MMORPG's and how the entertainment medium needs to be closely watched by business for trends. Of course, the ever popular World of Warcraft was used as the main punchline with it's annual revenues in excess of $1 Billion and more then 8.5 Million subscribers. Also getting mentioned was Second Life as more of a "business oriented" platform and an up and comer to watch. Could there be an expansion into China on the horizon for Great America Networks Conferencing? That is certainly an appealing option with a world of potential. As most of you know, cell phones are the preferred method of communication in China, and if you add that to our future cell phone and blackberry products that allow for call control from your wireless device, there is a large potential there. Our foray into the Second World community will continue to grow as the months move along, and we are building a very talented work force from within the Second Life community, and the potential is huge. The Second Life Convention will be in Chicago this year, and my biggest decision now is whether to be a key sponsor in one of the chosen tracks. I will be deciding that over the next couple of weeks. I'll post another article when our afternoon sessions are completed. For now it's off to lunch. www.ganconference.com
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SLNN Press Article
Firm brings RL audio conferencing service to SL
by Jenette Ellison
May 23, 2007 |  |  | | Great American Network Conferencing has meeting facilities on its island |
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| | GANC 2-- A new audio conferencing solution has arrived in Second Life ahead of Linden’s built-in voice beta client. Saturday, Great America Network Conferencing (GANC) unveiled its two-sim conference center, offering full conference packages to companies or groups that want to hold large meetings in SL. A kick-off party attracted about 24 guests for a tour and live music.
Using proprietary software, hardware and servers, GANC will offer a way for a full sim of avatars to have two-way phone conferencing, while hundreds more will be able to connect at the same time by phone-- up to thousands via Web conferencing. "No matter how much we get used to the chat environment, the reality is that the ability to communicate and get things done effectively is still over the phone," said GANC's chief executive officer Atalar Longstaff (Reno Provine in real life). "We want to give businesses the ability to conference the way they normally do, with the tools they normally use, here in SL," he said. "We will allow people to use their real phones and it will stream into SL, through our hardware." With LL releasing voice capabilities sometime this summer, soon it will not be unusual for a conference room of avatars to voice chat. GANC is positioning their service as superior in sound, scalability, and reliability. "SL voice, along with Skype and Ventrillo that people use with SL, are fine for the consumer level, but these are really not up to the level of business," said Pierce Benelli, vice president of GANC Sales. "That is why we offer our full audio bridge. It's clearer and more reliable, independent of headsets and sound cards," he said. Saturday people were able to listen via the parcel streaming, or call in and be part of the phone conference. A parcel listener, GEOELDER Clary, said, “The sound on site is excellent.”
The company has included in its build a private orientation island, with login direct from its Web site. "We want to make sure that people attending can effectively come in and have a good experience," Benelli said. The orientation consists of many stations, each showing a series of slide shows and notecards, and will have personal greeters and helpers along the way. He estimates it will take people about one hour to one hour and a half to complete the training. After finishing orientation, participants may use lindens provided in the conference package to go to a shopping area to buy accessories customize their avatars. "What we want is the smoothest transition into SL for someone with no experience. And along the way, we will have a group there to hold their hand," Benelli said.
From the shopping area, the guests can directly teleport to their conference location. The first is a Moroccan themed build, with two conferencing facilities, a cafe, an entertainment area, a pirate ship, and caves to explore. Other themes will be added in the future. "We are selling a memorable experience, something your clients will remember and tell others about," Benelli said. Many package sizes are available, but a small conference up to ten people can cost around $2000 USD.
Audio and video conferencing is not new to SL. January's opening of the U.S. Congress is one example. Hipcast co-founder Eric Rice created a convention center in SL last summer, with live media streaming capabilities, built by Endira Udal and Rez Menoptra of Rezzust. Jeff Pulver of Pulver.com brought in a conference center last fall called Pulveria. The first presentation at Pulveria was a live talk from the joint session of VON, or Video on the Net. Some however, aren't sold on using Second Life for mission-critical business conferences. "SL is a small conference venue and works best for groups that are regularly meeting," said another SL conference coordinator, Biscuit Carroll, founder of Conference Island. "To get a newb up to speed for conferencing takes 60 to 90 minutes. This is not a sensible proposition for a one-off meeting." Using the Holodeck designed by Carroll's parent company Inside This World, the Conference Island meeting environment can be transformed from a pool party to a board room, an office, a zen garden, jungle, tree house, or desert island. Carroll said many of his conference groups use a Web cast solution called Messagebank, or bring their own teleconferencing systems. He had a bleak view of the future of this market in SL, saying, "The reality is that most people interested in conferencing in SL buy their own sim."
The technology that sets the GANC centers apart from its competitors is in the audio bridge, which runs off numerous redundant servers at the company's Chicago headquarters, GANC sources said. The firm offers automated and operator-assisted audio conferencing options, dial out, video conferencing, Web collaboration, as well as a number of added features, such as participant polling, transcription, and call recording of audio conferences to enhance the conferencing experience. "Our goal is to have all of our products available outside of SL, available in-world," Reno said.
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Launch party in Second Life
Great America Networks Conferencing will be holding their official launch party in Second Life on their conferencing and events sim, The Alhambra Conference Center. The official event starts at 2PM PST and will include opening remarks and comments from Reno Provine, the President of Great America Networks Conferencing, as well as demonstrations of how the features and functionality will extend to allow corporations to have completely integrated events within Second Life. Some of the shortcomings that our company will be solving for corporations are: 1. Most companies use the telephone to communicate. Second Life has no solution for this. Our company utilizes state of the art audio conferencing bridges from Compunetix that allow for the connection of up to 5000 participants via telephone. I know most people in Second Life are thinking "who uses the phone? we use skype and ventrillo, and teamspeak. and what about Second Life chat and voice?" Our answer is quite simple. Businesses do not use those tools for corporate communications. While some may be capable, most use the telephone to communicate. It's that simple. None of the aforementioned solutions are business quality communications tools, nor are they reliable, nor are they simple to setup and use. All of them also require a different type of interaction then most business employees are used to, ie PC, microphone, etc. instead of the phone they just pick up and dial. 2. Most companies that hold press releases and large scale events don't want to be constrained with a maximum participation of 50. Our company allows our clients to have their participants take part in the event in the following ways, all in a seamless fashion: - Up to the maximum in SL for a sim - generally speaking 50
- SL users can listen one-way via the land stream parcel
- SL users can participate 2-way via telephone
- SL users can view the movie or slides via SL screens in-world
- SL users can communicate via SL chat
- Non-SL users can listen one-way via standard media player through audio stream
- Non-SL users can participate 2-way via telephone
- Non-SL users can view the movie or slides via standard Internet Browser
- Non-SL users can communicate via web tool chat in standard Internet Browser
All of this is coordinated by our trained meeting consultants and bridge operators. We can conduct formal Question and Answer sessions, provide polling results, and much more. 3. Most corporations who will be inviting clients or new users to attend their events will have to deal with the reality of the steep learning curve for a new person coming into Second Life for the first time. We provide their participants with custom avatars, clothing and accessories right off the bat. This will save them a lot of time and allow them to be impressed with their first experience. We will also bring them directly into our customized full-sim tutorial island. We have designed a truly outstanding environment for them to learn the basics of Second Life. They can go through the tutorials as quickly or as slowly as they like. They also have the option to come back at a later date for a more advanced tutorial session. 4. We will provide a truly unique experience for their event participants to come in and have their hands held the whole way. There will be pre and post event sessions held and allow for fun and exploration, as well as smaller breakout sessions. Participants will also be able to try their building skills in our customized tutorial sandbox, and explore our breathtaking sim layout. Easter egg hunts, and many other add-ons will be available to increase customer participation. 5. We provide a variety of add-on services including recording and archiving your event, converting your event into podcast format, providing archived streaming access to your event, customised registration pages with information capture, and much more. In summary, we are truly providing a unique service to companies that are coming into Second Life and have a need or desire to host unique events for their clients such as press releases, sales management events, IR calls, and much more. This is all in addition to our core offerings of audio conferencing, web conferencing, and video conferencing. To find out more about how you can use our organization for your next event, contact Pierce Benelli, Astryd James or myself Atalar Longstaff in the world of Second Life. Or go to www.ganconference.com for information about or company outside of Second Life, or www.slconferencing.com for information about our Second Life Division. You may also call 1-877-GET-GAN1 to speak to a live person. Reno Provine
President
Great America Networks Conferencing
rprovine@ganconference.com
www.ganconference.com
312-432-5325
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Second Life Press Release
| SLR_Exclusives: Video Conferencing Takes a Big Step in SecondLife (News, SL Reports) |
 Great American Networks Conferencing opens Orientation and Conference centers Saturday 19 May 2007
By Farqot Gustafson, Reporter
SLReports.Net
Updated: 16 May 2007 4:45 p.m. SLT
As SecondLife evolves beyond its virtual Las Vegas environment—and reputation—more companies are establishing a presence here. Consumer retails such as Circuit City and Sears, as well as IT heavy hitter’s Cisco, Dell, IBM and Microsoft, have created showrooms for their products, and many more are on the way. And why not—with 30–40,000 potential in-world customers at any moment, it’s a logical, albeit passive way of making your presence known.
(Click “Read More” to View Entire Article)
So what’s the next step? How about bringing your employees or even customer’s in-world, for orientation sessions, conferences and product demonstrations?
I had a chance to spend some time this week with SecondLife avatar Pierce Benelli, V.P. of Sales & Marketing for Great America Networks Conferencing (GANC), at their orientation and conference centers. GANC is a Chicago-based RL video conference provider, which offers audio, video and Internet conferencing and services.
We began our tour at the Tutorial Center, located on GANC 1. Developed by Anarchy in the UK, Ltd., the island at first reminded me of a cleaned version of SecondLife’s Orientation and Help islands (I half expected to see a newbie tooling around on a Segway). What I found was neatly laid out city plaza, leading to a series of projection screens, and a sandbox to practice in.
Pierce showed me several of the tutorials, which explained the basics of SecondLife, better than SecondLife does, frankly. As an RL trainer and technical writer, I was very impressed with how GANC will introduce newbie’s to the fundamentals of SecondLife.
From there, we flew to the dock and teleported to the conference center on GANC 2. We landed in the Main Square. Laid out to resemble Granada in southern Spain, the square area includes a modern open air café, a market area of old stone buildings, and the conference center itself. Designed to imitate Granada’s 14th century Moorish Alhambra Palace, the conference center is one of the most visually stunning sites I’ve seen in SecondLife. The variety of textures, use of color and low prim count make for a memorable experience.
I saw two conference areas. Conference suite 1 (located in what looked like a small castle, with design elements from a mosque, temple and church) was primarily a large room, with tables seating 8-10 people. This setup allows for small, intimate discussions, and should work well with smaller group audio sessions.
The second, in the Alhambra Palace, was a large round chamber, with a projection screen for a ceiling (thank planetarium in layout, only much larger). The participants are seated in the round, facing a speaker’s stand. Here participants can have streaming audio and video presentations, including 3-D mockups, as well as MS PowerPoint presentations.
According to Pierce, groups of up to 50 can be set up between the two facilities. Although they can seat more than that, the limitations of SecondLife itself slows everything down way too much for that to work. And due to those limitations, the quality won’t match that of the holographic projections of a Star Wars Jedi Council meeting, but Pierce see’s that improving over time as well.
The rest of the island is a visual treat to explore as well. The market area allows visitors to pickup clothing to customize their avatars, and even some building materials to work with in a second sandbox. The rest of the village has a variety of buildings to explore, and there are plenty of paths to walk, and even an old sailing ship to explore. Hopefully, conference participants will get the chance to do so; I know I’d loved to have entered SecondLife here!
Having sat through all too many jumpy RL video conferences over the last 10+ years myself, I can appreciate what GANC is doing here. In a little over a decade since the public was really allowed access to the Internet, we’ve seen great changes in it, and how it is being utilized by both individuals and businesses. GANC is one of those businesses who are pushing out the frontiers, and are doing so in an exciting way within SecondLife.
My thanks to Pierce Benelli for his time on the tour, as well as Atalar Longstaff (GANC President) and Astryd James (GANC V.P. of Client Relations) for their time answering my questions, and showing me around.
For more information, look at either GANC website (www.ganconferencing.com or www.slconferencing.com).
Pierce can reached at pierce.benelli@gmail.com. |
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Press Release
Great America Networks Announces Launch of New Conferencing Division 8 September 2005Great America Networks, Inc., the sister company of BTI Communications Group, Ltd., announces the launch of its newest conferencing and collaboration division, Great America Networks Conferencing, LLC. Already operational, the new division provides audio and video conferencing solutions as well as Web-based collaboration applications at a significantly competitive rate. ”Great America Networks Conferencing is the most recent step towards reaching the goal of being a one-stop shop for all of our clients’ telecommunications needs," according to Reno Provine, president for Great America Networks Conferencing, LLC, and chief operations officer for BTI Communications Group, Ltd. “While BTI and Great America Networks already allowed us to handle a significant portion of our clients’ telecommunications needs, the ability to service their audio, video, and web collaboration needs seemed like the logical next step.” The launch of GANC provides several synergistic opportunities for BTI’s new and existing clients, according to Provine. The fact that a client can receive a phone system with all of the associated hardware and software, their network services (such as Local, Long Distance and Internet Access), and their Audio, Video and Web Conferencing is unique in the industry. In addition to this, they are able to receive significant discount volumes across the board for all of the services that they may choose to utilize within the BTI family. Special consideration should be paid to the fact that a customer can receive all of the above services on one single invoice, and that their rates can all be customized to take advantage of price blending across services. The executive team will consider GANC a successful launch by measuring the amount of services that are utilized by our existing customer base. To us, this will be the ultimate indicator that the GANC offering accomplishes it's true goal, which is to be the one-stop shop for all of our clients’ telecommunications needs. GANC’s current product lineup includes automated and operator-assisted audio conferencing options, dial out, video conferencing, Web collaboration, as well as a number of added features, such as participant polling, transcription, and call recording of audio conferences to enhance the conferencing experience. “QuickConnect® and QuickPresenter® have to be at the top of the list for greatest benefit to users,“ says Provine. QuickConnect® is a simple-to-use, but highly efficient audio conferencing tool that allows individuals to host conference calls on the fly for instantaneous collaboration among employees with no need for creating reservations or for learning complex codes and systems. QuickPresenter® goes hand in hand with QuickConnect® by allowing users to instantaneously work on the same document together, collaborate and view the document and make edits where appropriate. “Our clients’ can rest assured that the same quality and reliability for which the BTI name has always been known is inherent throughout each of the three organizations – BTI Communications Group, Ltd., Great America Networks, and Great America Networks Conferencing, LLC – and the attention to detail and customer service that has always separated BTI from its competitors for the past 20 years will only improve with the addition of our latest business entity,” says Provine. About Great America Networks
Great America Networks Conferencing, LLC, the conferencing and collaboration subsidiary of Great America Networks, Inc. (GAN), was created to add audio and video conferencing and Web collaboration tools to small- and medium-sized businesses worldwide rounding out GAN’s service offerings. Great America Networks, the sister company of BTI Communications Group, Ltd., was started in 2002 to provide reliable and cost-effective local and long distance service. GAN is licensed to service California, Illinois, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Texas and Illinois and is continually working to expand its service areas.
Prior to GAN’s inception, BTI offered both local and long distance service, as a sales agent for other carriers for voice, video and communication needs for businesses. Due to limited control over quality of service as an agent, BTI created GAN to provide clients a comprehensive lineup of services creating a one-stop solution for all communications services to small- and medium-sized businesses. More information can be found at www.ganconference.com.
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What Sets Us Apart From The Rest?
We know that you have many choices when it comes to conferencing and collaboration products and services. You can do a google search for "conference call" and you will have literally 50 companies vying to earn your business. This doesn't include the big boys that do their sales through their direct sales arms. While this is excellent news for companies that use conferencing services, I would like to tell you a little about why we feel that we are the best option for you. There are basically 3 tiers of conferencing companies: Tier 1: Large providers - IE Intercall, Genesys, Premiere
Pros: Name recognition, lots of employees and locations, generally speaking their products work
Cons: Typically 3 times more expensive, someone has to pay for all of those employees and locations, and it is very difficult to be treated with any sense of individuality when you are one of tens of thousands of accounts
Infrastructure: Usually state of the art and extensive build outs, however they usually are always fighting with the struggle of migrating from older technology to new
Pricing: Expensive, Like a 5 star restaurant but without the 5 star service
Service: Marginal at best unless your account bills more then $25k per month Tier 2: Middle providers - IE Budget Conferencing, A+ Conferencing, our company of course
Pros: Some name recognition (some of these companies have been around for more then a decade), tight control over employee numbers and locations, products typically work very well (they must to keep their clients) Very good pricing (but smart enough not to lose money)
Cons: May be a struggle to find them initially, usually very small direct sales forces and get business by word of mouth and referrals
Infrastructure: Excellent, New Technology, Well Managed
Pricing: Extremely Competitive
Service: Usually Outstanding (they must earn and keep your business each and every month with the big boys direct sales staffs calling you every month to get you to switch over to them) Tier 3: Bargain Basement - You've seen their ads on google - They went out and bought a single VOIP Conferencing bridge at 1/5 the cost of the top two providers and are giving away their service. Typically defined as no infrastructure, no service, sometimes you don't even have a way to call them.
Pros: Cheap
Cons: Everything else
Infrastructure: Cheap VOIP bridge with poor bandwidth management. Leads to dropped calls, garbled conversations and poor quality in general
Service: Usually none to speak of. Mainly email communication and automated forms. Almost always require credit cards and prepayments
Pricing: Dirt Cheap - (sometimes they are even losing money to try and get into the game) What does this say to you? Hopefully it shows you that the technology and infrastructure behind a conferencing company is vital to your success. We all know what going the cheap route does for you, and while you may save a few dollars by going with a Tier 3 provider, I hope you truly do understand exactly what you're getting. Find out more about us at www.ganconference.com or call and talk to a real person at 1-877-GET-GAN1.
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Online Communities
We've all seen the headlines. Social networking is the next "big thing". From Myspace to Youtube we're all asking ourselves, are these companies really worth what they're selling for? Hundreds of millions to billions of dollars are being spent on these social communities. What makes them so special and valuable? Personally, I think the true financial value of these organizations are still to be determined, however any medium that can draw millions of subscribers is obviously worth a lot of money to the right organizations. I have been involved with a few of these communities and have a bit of insight. Second Life - This is one of the largest virtual worlds in existence today. Over 6 million residents and $1.5 million dollars are spent daily in this virtual world. Sure, you'll find many articles on both sides of the fence about this virtual world, but the fact remains that it's the most popoular in terms of subscriber base for a non-gaming virtual world. I have recently launched a presence in Second Life for my company and am currently offering conferencing and collaboration services within this environment. It's not a game per se as there are no "levels" or killing, or any end-game at all really. It's purely a social networking environment on a large scale, combined with a revenue generation model and economy that allows individuals and businesses to earn decent to envious sums of money. You can find out more about what we offer in this medium at www.slconferencing.com. Project Entropia - A completely different take on a virtual world environment. This follows the more traditional MMORPG systems including wepons, hunting, leveling, etc. In this sense it is probably more easily acceptable to traditional gamers then Second Life. However, it also has a deep economy as well that allows for individuals to literally make thousands of dollars. They recently launched Virtual Banking Licenses that were purchased for an average of $90k each in addition to the purchasers needing to deposit $100k to secure funds. As you can see, we have moved well beyond your traditional "game". There are several others as well that I have not tried yet, including There.com (too cartoony for me and not enough real dollars involved) and several others. I firmly believe that over the next 5 years there will be a transition from traditional 2-D web pages to these 3-D virtual environments. While these virtual worlds are still looked down upon by most traditional businesses and individuals, I predict these attitudes will change over the next year or two. For more information you can go to www.ganconference.com.
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