One Click and We Were In – Sametime V11.5

HCL’s video conferencing and chat system Sametime has gotten a major overhaul. During Digital Week we not only got to see a demo of Sametime 11.5, we also got to use it. One click, and we were in!

During the presentation of Sametime Premium, HCL didn’t just focus on the technological side. They were also eager to point out the cost savings of using Sametime Premium, compared to other similar systems:

This is an example for a company with 10 000 users. That’s huge for a Nordic company, but you can still use this table to find out what the costs would be for your organisation.

Another thing HCL really want to emphasize is that you can choose whether you want to run your Sametime  server(s) on premise, or in the cloud. And even if you choose the cloud, your data will never be shared or used by anyone else but you. This is in stark contrast to most of the competition:

 

Sametime Premium comes with a lot of features:

Persistent chat means that you can have a chat going on in the Sametime chat app, either in the standalone app or in the embedded Sametime client in Notes, and then you can start the Sametime app on your mobile, and you can continue the same chat there. All chat history included, of course.

Demo is all well and nice, but on Wednesday, I was invited to a session with Sametime Meetings. All I had to do was the following:

• Click the link
• The web browser took me to the meeting web page
• Wrote my name, since I joined as a guest (without having to log on)
• And I was in.

I could chat, share my screen and use my camera and microphone. I could also see and hear all other 30 or so participants

It worked great! No plugins had to be installed and no clients. I just joined via my web browser (Chrome), but I spoke to others who had joined with FireFox.

If you have the Sametime Meetings app installed on either your PC, Mac, tablet or phone, you can join via that as well.

You can create a Sametime meeting directly from your Notes or Verse calendar. You can also use Sametime in Outlook. HCL don’t have an Outlook plugin yet but all you need is a URL. Sametime can also let you create meeting rooms from Outlook or any other platform.

The meeting UI is easy to navigate, and you can share your screen very quickly:

You can even stream the meeting on YouTube, out of the box:

I mentioned above that Sametime Meetings has a mobile client. You can install this via a QR-code. After installing, you just need to type your username and password, because, get this: The QR code will automatically fill inn the server name and other settings that are needed!

You can of course also create a Sametime meeting from the web client:

Of course, you can record your meetings. And the meeting video will be generated and be ready for download immediately after the meeting has ended!

Sametime has really caught up with, and in many ways surpassed, it’s competitors. And remember: You get Sametime chat (without meetings, screen capture and file sharing) included in your Domino license. You can then run the integrated Sametime client inside Notes, as well as a standalone chat client, and the mobile client. Talk about RTO!