Many of our enterprise and government customers use ConnectSolutions for internal collaboration with globally distributed team members.  Many also conduct live web training events to their international and domestic staff.

These secure broadcasts enable interaction at a fraction of time and cost of in-person collaboration.  Additionally, with the wide distribution and reliability of our server network, we are able to make public events available to even wider audiences.  This wide, public distribution strategy is seen most regularly with the US State Department’s Co.Nx program, which engages in virtual diplomacy via facebook.

Co.Nx is currently live-streaming the Association of Binational Centers of Latin America Conference, and next week will broadcast The Presidents Forum with Young African Leaders.  The broadcast of the Young African Leaders forum includes a Town Hall with President Obama on Tuesday afternoon, a webchat with State Department Undersecretary Maria Otero, and a chat with a group of Namibian Delegates to the forum.

The US State Department is just one of many ConnectSolutions clients, in both the government and enterprise spheres, who broadcast internationally.  Here are some stats about our top international visitors in the first 7 months of 2010:

Top 10 Countries (by Number of visits)

1. United States
2. China
3. Canada
4. United Kingdom
5. India
6. France
7. Germany
8. Australia
9. Turkey
10. Japan

Top 10 Countries (by average time on site)

1. Uganda
2. Mauritania
3. Congo
4. Tunisia
5. Cambodia
6. Estonia
7. Costa Rica
8. Uruguay
9. Slovakia
10. Syria

As the year progresses, and more of our clients engage in international collaboration, we look forward to seeing how these numbers shift.

For federal employees, telework is a mandated option (read more about ConnectSolutions support of FISMA-compliant web conferencing), and with the productivity gains combined with the benefits of remote work in the face of pandemic flu concerns, a very logical option at that.  It is good to see the continued support for telework by Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry and federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra:

“When you think about it, the president is really the teleworker in chief. He’s connected wherever he goes,” Berry said. “Yesterday was a good example: New York City in the morning, Pittsburgh in the afternoon and Washington at night. While the president has a little bit of a unique position, and everyone can’t have all of his communications gear, the technology is catching up to that.”

Source

The reality is that everyone does have access to sufficient communication systems to empower successful telework.  We’ve been doing this for quite some time with thousands of federal employees, and look forward to continuing to expand upon these services with ConnectSolutions Podium for large-scale events and communication efforts as well.

ConnectSolutions has had the opportunity to support a variety of webcasts for President Obama through its partnership with the U.S. State Department and its highly successful CO.NX program, but we’ll have to work on providing him with his own personal virtual oval office meeting room as well.

There’s a helpful discussion on managing secure web conferencing with Acrobat Connect Pro available on the connectusers.com site available here:

Topic of the Month, April 09, Secure and Scalable Web Conferencing – Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro User Community

From the site:  “With an ever growing list of security standards and compliance initiatives that IT applications must adhere to, deciding exactly how to set up your Connect Pro account can be a confusing. Similarly, as your implementation grows so do the demands on providing a platform that is going to scale with increased usage. This month we’ve decided to focus on helping Connect Pro administrators configure your deployments to best meet these increasing demands and provide tips and tricks for end users on managing meeting security.”

ConnectSolutions and Adobe held a webinar discussing the benefits of Acrobat Connect Pro for Government agencies, and you can view the on-demand recording by going here.  Topics discussed include web collaboration, training, Telework, and COOP for Federal Agencies.  The webinar also includes a discussion of FEMA’s use of web collaboration.

With ConnectSolutions, your Adobe Connect Pro investments are deployed in secure data center facilities to meet or exceed FISMA requirements. For federal agencies this can mean savings of countless budget dollars, specialized resources and staff hours to develop the necessary infrastructure, processes, controls and documentation.

If you are a government agency considering web conferencing and training investments, this environment provides with you a rapid deployment, while also meeting your C&A requirements much faster.