Genesys charges per minute for Web conferencing

PARIS – Genesys Conferencing SA hopes to attract more users to its audio, video and Web conferencing services by doing away with subscription fees and per-seat licenses for conferences using its Genesys Meeting Center platform.

On Wednesday the company introduced the Multimedia Minute, a new tariff under which businesses pay a flat fee per user, per minute to access Genesys Meeting Center. The service combines audio, video and Web conferencing, and its Web-based control panel allows moderators to choreograph online presentations, share documents or applications, guide visits to Web sites and conduct surveys, according to the company, which is based in Montpellier, France.

Pricing can vary with local market conditions and currency fluctuations, but a price of €0.25 (about US$0.29) per user, per minute for access to the multimedia conferencing service, excluding local telecommunication costs, would be typical, according to the company’s vice president for Northern Europe, Nigel Dunn. Straightforward audio conferencing costs about €0.20 per user, per minute, he said.

Companies can also opt to have employees access Meeting Center conferences via a toll-free number, or to access international conference calls via local bridges, in which case Genesys adds the cost of operating the toll-free service or the international links to their bill, Dunn said.

Veritas Software Corp. and stationery supplier Office Depot Inc. are among the companies already using the Multimedia Minute tariff in Europe.

Veritas has been a Genesys customer for a number of years, according to Craig Donald, director of information systems and technology for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Veritas. “We have always been heavy users of audio conferencing,” he said.

At the start of this year, Veritas staff in the U.K. spent 50,000 minutes or more each month in audio conferences, split among four service providers.

Looking for a way to cut costs and reduce the number of suppliers the company used to originate conference calls in the U.K., Donald asked three of the companies to pitch new tariffs. The offers ranged from £0.18 ($0.31) per user, per minute, down to the £0.10 bid by Genesys.

Unlike Multimedia Minute, “None of the other offerings were bundled, they were all audio only, you paid extra for Web conferencing,” he said. In once case, adding Web conferencing would have doubled the price to £0.30.

Genesys’ pricing is so attractive Donald is actually encouraging users to spend more time online. “We expect usage will increase by 25 percent, but the budget will be slightly lower,” he said. Although the company has no formal policy to reduce business travel, he said he hopes staff will consider using the conferencing service instead.

Integrating the multimedia element in conferences over the Genesys system also allows Veritas to cut costs by giving up per-seat licensing of systems like PlaceWare or Webex, Donald said. Although such services are still necessary for events involving thousands of users, this is not a big deal for Veritas, as conferencing is used mainly for work group collaboration, he said.

Office Depot approached Genesys to provide a pan-European conferencing service to replace a patchwork of systems provided by different national telecommunications operators, and has been using Multimedia Minute since September, according to Office Depot’s European telecommunications manager, Johan Meulekamp. The company now has a total of about 200 Genesys users in 12 European countries. That number could rise sharply if the interest the company’s training department has shown in the Web conferencing system leads it to sign up — the company has hundreds of agents in its Venlo, Netherlands, call center alone, he said.