Jill Burger's Real-time Collaboration-based Learning Vendor Series
During our rigorous research on the US market for Real-time Collaboration-based Learning products, fourteen vendors were selected by Ambient Insight for inclusion in this series. They were selected because combined they represent the full range of Real-time Collaboration-based Learning products. Ambient Insight wrote the profiles and vendors were invited to review the content for errors or oversights.
As perhaps the most dominant vendor in the PreK-12 and Higher Education markets, Elluminate has a large loyal following of academic buyers. They solicit constant feedback from their customers on product design. As a result of this focus on the customer, Elluminate has a deep and evolving understanding of what users want--they are now taking this critical knowledge with them as they penetrate the other buyer segments.
Interestingly, Elluminate maintains that one of the most exciting markets now for Real-time Collaboration-based Learning is the global PreK-12 market. They have found that young international students are enthusiastic users of collaboration technology. The company is also the only supplier Ambient Insight tracks who currently markets and sells their product to organizations that support home schools.
Elluminate offers the following versions of its Elluminate Live! software:
- Elluminate Live!® Academic Edition™ is a real-time virtual classroom environment designed for distance education and collaboration in academic institutions.
- Elluminate Live!® Enterprise Edition™ is a enterprise-class, real-time collaborative environment designed for corporate training and collaboration.
- Elluminate Live!® Lite Edition™ is a pared down tool for users who want to try out Web Conferencing, or who only need basic functionality that includes full-duplex audio, interactive whiteboard, instant messaging, and advanced, yet easy-to-use, moderator tools.
This family of offerings enables them to appeal to all sizes of organizations, whether academic or corporate. The pricing of their Lite Edition is well suited to small companies or small departments within larger companies. Elluminate Live! is now clearly being marketed to sales, marketing, operations, and horizontal functions within the corporate enterprise. As a product for scheduled, spontaneous, or recorded enterprise collaboration, it works. Key features include:
- Interactive quiz and survey manager
- Content development tools
- AppSnap copy and paste from desktop
- Live video via webcam
- Emotion and activity indicators
Elluminate Live! version 7.0 was released in July 2006. With this release, Elluminate has expanded the capabilities of its software to improve the user experience, adding file transfer, full duplex audio, participant profiles and accelerator keys, among other features. They have expanded the accessibility features to provide full compliance with the Section 508 accessibility guidelines. The upgrade also includes support for closed captioning services.
They promote their Collaborative Communications Framework (CCF) as a technology designed to ensure all participants are in sync, regardless of their Internet connection speed. Building on the education lexicon, they have dubbed this their “No User Left Behind” technology in an effort to tap the market awareness of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Their major value proposition from a technology point of view, however, is not their CCF, but rather the fact that Elluminate Live! runs on multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac, Solaris, and Linux. This has enabled them to handily dominate US education markets where Windows is not as pervasive as it is in corporate America.
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