Groupware Function: Conferencing

Different forms of conferencing can be used for shared discussions about particular topics. Conferencing's advantage over e-mail is that it allows many people to become involved, while e-mail is usually restricted to a small number of people receiving the message. In a business context, the discussion often revolves around proposals to solve a particular problem such as "which markets should we target to maximize revenue?" or for hosting support for electronic meetings. Computer based conferencing is an increasingly popular business application as it enables the distributed or virtual business to operate when decision makers are geographically separated. Additionally, the discussion does not have to occur as real time video-conferencing if people are unavailable then asynchronous text based conferencing can occur. We look at the alternatives for conferencing by the media that are used.