Sonexis Inc. on Monday announced a new version of its flagship audio and Web conferencing system that adds additional security capabilities and provides broader support for enterprise collaboration software.
With ConferenceManager 4.0, Sonexis provides support for Secure Socket Layer (SSL) security so that any content shared during a Web conference is encrypted. Such encryption will help companies comply with security and privacy requirement under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, said Ed Wadbrook, senior vice president of product management and strategy at Sonexis, of Tewksbury, Mass.
“Security is important because day in and day out companies of all sizes are concerned about the confidentiality of their confidential documents,” Wadbrook said.
In addition, the release is part of Sonexis effort to target larger enterprises along with its usual base of small and medium business customers, he said. ConferenceManager, unlike many Web conferencing competitors, is server software that enterprises deploy in house.
As part of its larger enterprise push, ConferenceManager 4.0 adds integration with Lotus Notes so that users can schedule and coordinate Web and audio conferences directly through Notes. Previous ConferenceManager versions only integrated with Microsoft Outlook.
The latest release also doubles the systems capacity. ConferenceManager 4.0 will be able to support conferences with as many as 200 Web attendees and as many as 192 traditional PSTN audio ports or 240 voice-over-IP ports, according to Sonexis.
Other new features in the 4.0 release include application sharing so participants can control any application on a hosts PC and audio recording and playback so participants can listen to a conference at any time.
After the 4.0 release, Sonexis is planning to release another version of ConferenceManager in the summer of 2005, Wadbrook said. The focus of that version will be to provide synchronized recording and playback so that the audio and Web presentation portions of a conference can be stored as a single file. It will also offer streaming audio of a conference and build international versions of the products for markets outside of North America, he said.
Pricing for ConferenceManager 4.0 starts at $1,000 per port for a concurrent user license.