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By Jill Burger, Principal Research Analyst
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.
Ambient Insight considers eBLVD to be one of a new breed of disruptor vendors capable of altering the competitive landscape. There products have great appeal to the small and medium business market. eBLVD, founded in 2001, is privately held and focuses on Web-based communication software, as well as help desk tools. Their products are used for remote assistance and live product training.
eBLVD offers two products: Online Meetings and Remote Desktop. Each are fifth-generation releases (5.1). Online Meetings is their Web conferencing offering and Remote Desktop is their remote control offering, which enables help desk workers to take control of their end-user’s desktop in order to help resolve an issue or to provide live product mentoring.
eBLVD is browser-based, but uses a proprietary implementation of P2P resource-pooling technology. The company claims that it is their proprietary technology that allows them to keep their prices as low as they do. It is this low price point that has attracted small and medium business buyers. Until now, these businesses could not afford enterprise-priced learning technology and companies like eBLVD have finally brought learning technology to this massive demographic.
Voice Over IP (VoIP) telephony is included in the flat rate. Presenters can include their own audio-conference information or use eBLVD's toll-free service at 5 cents per minute per user. Straddling the line between feature-rich and easy to use, the product enables instant participation in meetings with little more than a Web browser and an Internet connection. It incorporates many of the standard interactive tools available in the other Collaboration-based Learning products covered in this report.
eBLVD Online Meetings and Web Conferencing, for example, includes co-branding, session recording, file transfer, remote control for collaboration, and voice or keyboard chat. They also offer a unique an annotation feature to illustrate, highlight, or annotate anytime during a meeting.
An interesting differentiator is that participants can copy and paste information—such as text blurbs or whole documents—from the presenter’s machine onto their local clipboards.
- eBLVD Online Meetings - also handles invitations and sets up official online presentations, while it’s Instant Access and Shared Visuals feature enables users to conduct impromptu meetings, without the hassle of pre-scheduled reservations.
- eBLVD Remote Desktop - is a remote application support tool. With this tool, support engineers can view and edit any Windows application from their Web browser and otherwise “take control” of someone else’s desktop. (Some download or security clearance is required which makes Remote Desktop slightly more complex than their Online Meetings offering).
eBLVD targets the horizontal markets for Web demonstrations and interdepartmental meetings as well as help desks and support functions. Their typical customer is a support person or an inside sales person, each performing ad hoc, live Web demos or remote control technical support assistance. Ambient Insight’s research has found that up 50% of the time technical support personnel are actually providing training to users, and not fixing technical problems.
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