ON24 Launches Virtual Show for Trade Show Events

ON24 began its focus on corporate events with corporate webinars, but announced yesterday that it had expanded to include virtual worlds for trade shows, conferences, and events with ON24 Virtual Show. The new service will compete with existing services like Unisfair and the upcoming Venue Network, but it seems like the differentiator is that it will build off and integrate ON24's existing services. Virtual Show targets users looking to avoid travel costs and time as well as extending physical events' reach with networking, virtual booths, webcasts, and a customizable interface.

"ON24 has a history of providing our customers with reliable solutions that work every time with global customer-centric service,"  Sharat Sharan, President and CEO of ON24, Inc., said in a statement. "With ON24 Virtual Show, we are transforming how organizations leverage webcasting and virtual events for their global communication and demand generation needs."

Comments

[Cece Salomon-Lee]

Thanks for including our news on your site. Please let me know if you're interested in seeing our prototype or learning more about ON24. Thanks again!

Cece
Sr. Marcomm Manager,
ON24

[Claude Gelinas]

ON24 relies on Real technology and for me, that's a bad move because lots of people will need to download this plug-in into their browser for the virtual trade shows to be visible (or work, for that matter).

Lots of companies will pop-up with this kind of online trade show offering and eventually, an open source alternative will become available and their entier business model will need to be revamped for it to stay competitive.

Furthermore, ON24 don't mention the prices for their solutions so it must be prohibitively expensive.

[Cece Salomon-Lee]

@claude - Actually, this is not correct. The ON24 Virtual Show solution is entirely built in Flash - not Real Technology. Over 98% of computers (Mac, Linux, Windows) have Flash installed.

For the presentations, we will initially have the option for Real or Windows media with Flash being incorporated over the next month of so. This is part of our second announcement to introduce Flash for our webcasts. Our customers now have the option to stream webcasts in Flash, Windows or Real.

Regarding price, ON24 Virtual Show would range from $20,000-50,000 depending on the complexity of the show and number of exhibits. This is from the production side. The cost for exhibiting/sponsoring the show is dictated by the organization producing the event.

When you look at the cost of travel, lodging, food, productivity out of the office, and to ship and staff a booth, I would argue that this is very cost-effective.

[Claude Gelinas]

@cece - Let me first thank you for answering my comment with such clear answers, especially about the pricing for your solution.

I believe the demo I wanted to watch (and never saw) was that of the Cisco ASR 1000 series which can be accessed from this web page:

http://on24.com/resourcelib_demogallery.html

...as you'll see, there are a total of 4 Real-related plug-ins at play and on my computer (latest MacOS X using Firefox 3), none of them displayed, at all.

Obviously, I may be part of the exception since millions of web users have downloaded and installed Real plugins on their computers so that issue likely won't affect them.

Thanks to your explanation, I'm now "in the know" about the fact that Adobe's Flash technology is the underlying foundation, at ON24. It's a nice compromise between the need for maximum accessibility and attractive multimedia.

Rest assured I find your business idea wonderful since it'll help more people convene while using less resources and wasting much less time — from that angle, you're taking your place as market leaders.

The point I was making about open source has to do with the pressure you'll eventually face from competitors popping up from all over the world. However, since you're pioneering the online trade show business, chances are you'll be well positioned to stay on top of things.

Rest assured I'll keep on monitoring ON24, over the coming months and years because, by all means, these are exciting times!

[Cece Salomon-Lee]

@Claude - ahhh, now I know what you're referring to. Until recently, mac users with Firefox were automatically defaulted to Real. We hope that our new Flash capabilities will alleviate this as more of our customer adopt Flash over the next 1-2 years.

Thanks and we think it's exciting for ON24 too =)

[Trade Show Booths]

Thanks for this information.