Every now and then I will come across a company that still uses NetMeeting as a customer-facing communication tool. I never understand why a company would subject their customers, partners, or prospects to the time consuming process required to establish a connection with NetMeeting. Imagine starting a customer meeting with, "Sure Mr. Customer, I can show you a quick demo of my product but can you first get your IT Admin on the phone so we can ask him/her if it's okay to open up ports in the firewall, make a quick configuration to the proxy server, and provide us with your IP address so I can get connected to you? Second, if other people want to see the demo, great but they have to watch the demo with you on your computer since NetMeeting is designed for only one on one's and it's daisy chain architecture creates a performance bottleneck if more people join...Thanks."
After spending 10-15 minutes finding the IT Admin and establishing a connection, you finally begin the demo. Five minute pass by and the customer asks if they can "test drive" the application. (They can't with NetMeeting) Then they ask if it's your product or NetMeeting that is slow. (You tell them it's NetMeeting of course but wonder if the customer thinks otherwise.) Then the meeting abruptly ends for no reason but you tell the customer that you accidently closed the connection and apologize. Finally, as you wrap things up, you wonder why they said, "Well, the budget is really tight right now. We are just collecting information and doing a tirekicking session, thanks for your time. We'll get back to you when things start picking up." (How to Establish a Netmeeting Connections Through a Firewall)
This is a scenario that I hear all the time from my personal customers who reduced their technology risk and made the switch.
If this isn't enough to get companies to start looking at alternative high-touch web collaboration solutions, how about the fact that Microsoft has discontinued this FREE product! (Download NetMeeting at CNET.com) What's Microsoft saying about their very own technology if they discontinue it and no longer support it? In addition, it lacks tools to monitor usage, lacks API's for integration, and does not support a record and playback capability necessary for compliance with new requirements for audit trails such as Sarbanes-Oxley.
Bottom line...NetMeeting is difficult to setup, not reliable, and is subject to many performance issues. It is a high risk gamble if you plan to use it for customer communications. Potential consequences...lost deals, lost revenue, lost market share, dissatisfied customers, update the resume, find a new job.
