Giving a presentation or attending a meeting just got easier with the campus-wide roll out of WebEx, a desktop web conferencing service that offers on-demand, real-time, collaborative web meetings and conferencing to all faculty, staff, and students.

With WebEx, you can host a live meeting and invite colleagues to join from wherever they are--using a desktop, laptop, smartphone, or iPad. WebEx works with PC, Mac, and Linux with apps for iOS, Android, and Blackberry. Since WebEx uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), you don’t need a dedicated phone line either.

To start a meeting, simply sign in to Georgia Tech’s WebEx site, set up the conference time, and email the details to your attendees from a link that WebEx sends you. Then shortly before your meeting, make sure everything is set up, much as you would if you were in a meeting room.

With its real-time access, you can toggle between a presentation and a live demo on your desktop or take a poll of your audience. You can turn on video if you want your audience to see you, allow attendees to use their webcams in a live meeting, share or edit a document, and brainstorm with others using WebEx’s whiteboard. Because it’s a robust system, WebEx can handle up to 500 attendees in one meeting, and with Tech’s license agreement, your attendees don’t have to be associated with Georgia Tech to attend a virtual meeting.

“OIT expects the full roll-out of this service to allow more collaboration both locally and internationally,” says Kim MacLeod, Sr. Application Developer and WebEx Service Manager for the Office of Information Technology (OIT). “One Tech student needed to defend his thesis with faculty in several countries recently, and WebEx was the perfect solution."

Mark Juliano, Director of Information Technology for the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, is already on board. "I've had two of my professors testing it,” he says, “and it's been working flawlessly for one in France and another in Germany.”

Lync and WebEx have overlapping functionality so in most cases, it comes down to personal preference. WebEx allows you to record audio and video using its own player for playback later or for archiving meetings, and you can keep the same URL for reoccurring meetings. In addition, WebEx provides 24X7/365 end-user support from Cisco.

To access WebEx, visit the WebEx Self Service page at http://www.oit.gatech.edu/webex.