E/Pop Top Of The Charts For SMi

Published 4th September 2006

Conferencing Company Saves Money Through Eliminating Travel Costs Thanks To WiredRed's Web Conferencing Solution...

WiredRed, a leader in enterprise-scale real-time communication, today announced that SMi Group is using its web-conferencing tool - 'e/pop' - to enhance its service offerings by enabling multiple secure, interactive conferences and briefings to take place simultaneously, regardless of time or location.

SMi Group is at the forefront of linking businesses with information, organising over 160 conferences and 100 executive briefings every year. As a key provider of management report publications, subscription products and conference documentation, SMi helps businesses to keep
up-to-date on the latest developments in their sector. Within the past year, thousands of senior executives from blue chip companies have benefited from SMi's highly targeted conferences, executive briefings, newsletters and management reports.

The SMi Group runs conferences throughout the year across a variety of subjects, but with a strong focus on finance, defence, energy and pharmaceutical sectors. Although the conferences are based in Europe many of the keynote speakers live and work in America. "Once payment,
travel and accommodation was brought into consideration we realised just how much of an expense this was becoming, what we wanted was a way that they could participate without the need for them to be in the same locale," explains SMi Multimedia Manager James Talbot.

Firstly, Talbot and his team tried setting up a teleconference at the events, where delegates could hear the speaker - through a phone link - but could neither see, or properly interact with them. However the feedback from delegates wasn't good so SMi decided to explore other
options. "Video conferencing proved far too expensive," explained Talbot. "Also, whilst ISDN is defacto in the US, in the UK it is still emerging technology and many of the venues we use simply haven't got the bandwidth required for such technology."

After trying to develop a solution in house, a simple web search put SMi in contact with web conferencing specialists WiredRed. "It was amazing. WiredRed's e/pop did everything we were trying to do in house," enthused Talbot. "In addition, we were impressed by how cost effective it was when compared to the competition."

SMi purchased a five-user licence of e/pop so that it could, theoretically run five separate conferences at any one time. e/pop web conferencing is one of the most secure web conferencing solutions available today. It is installed software, so SMi has control over physical security, web conference routing, and access to server event logs. At the click of a mouse, SMi can set its conference server to always use SSL3/TLS or let its conference hosts decide whether they want to use secure connections. For sensitive applications, SMi can also set its conference server to use your own public key infrastructure (PKI).

"e/pop is a completely self-contained installation, that does not have any dependencies nor does it require previously installed web servers, databases, or any other complex server prerequisite. As such installation takes only a matter of minutes which is particularly
attractive to companies such as SMi," explains WiredRed UK Managing Director Tom Sloan

"As well as using international speakers, we have been burnt in the past when speakers would pull out last minute," comments Talbot. "Now with e/pop we have been able to proceed with ten presentations by important speakers in the past two months that otherwise may not have been
possible or cost effective, to do in the past. The delegates haveprovided excellent feedback on the technology and have especially liked the fact that the speaker is able to interact and point and examples on the screen just as if they are in the same room," continues Talbot.

"e/pop really is the perfect solution for conference organisers as it removes travel and cost as a barrier to getting the very best speakers for their conferences," commented Sloan. "e/pop fills a void where a fully live and interactive solution is required in an instructor-led
session, whether in conferences, seminars, lectures or ongoing employee training scenarios."