WebEx Video Conferencing Service Now Available to Campus

Giving a presentation or attending a meeting just got easier with the Office of Information Technology’s campus-wide roll out of WebEx, a desktop web conferencing service that offers on-demand, real-time, collaborative web meetings and conferencing to all faculty, staff, and students.

With WebEx, users can host live meetings and invite colleagues to join from wherever they’re located--using a desktop, laptop, smartphone, or iPad. WebEx works with PC, Mac, and Linux with apps for iOS, Android, and Blackberry. Since WebEx uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), there’s no need for a dedicated phone line either.

“OIT expects the full roll-out of this service to allow more collaboration both locally and internationally,” says Kim MacLeod, senior application developer and WebEx service manager for the Office of Information Technology (OIT). “One Tech student needed to defend his thesis with faculty in several countries recently, and WebEx was the perfect solution."

To start a meeting, users simply sign in to Georgia Tech’s WebEx site, set up the conference time, and email the details to attendees from a link that WebEx sends them. Then shortly before the meeting, they make sure everything is set up, much as if hosting in a physical meeting room.

With its real-time access, users can toggle between a presentation and a live demo on their desktop or take a poll of the audience. They can turn on video if they want their audience to see them, allow attendees to use their webcams in a live meeting, share or edit a document, and brainstorm with others using WebEx’s whiteboard. Because it’s a robust system, WebEx can handle up to 500 attendees in one meeting, and with Tech’s license agreement, attendees don’t have to be associated with Georgia Tech to attend a virtual meeting.

Mark Juliano, director of information technology for the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, is already on board. "I've had two of my professors testing it,” he says, “and it's been working flawlessly for one in France and another in Germany.”

Lync and WebEx have overlapping functionality so in most cases, it comes down to personal preference. WebEx allows the user to record audio and video using its own player for playback later or for archiving meetings, and the user can keep the same URL for reoccurring meetings. In addition, WebEx provides 24X7/365 end-user support from Cisco.