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Drastic reductions in business travel since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have sparked renewed interest in Web conferencing systems as a way to reach customers and employees.
As telecommunications companies in New York and Washington struggled to restore service and cope with network traffic in the wake of the Sept. 11 disaster, many businesses turned to Web and video conferencing to keep connected.
As businesses canceled meetings and banned travel, Web sites and online conferencing systems were embraced by companies across the country.
T. Rowe Price Investment Services Inc., Baltimore, canceled all company travel beginning Sept. 11, including a meeting with an international bank scheduled for 10 a.m. the day of the attacks.
As luck would have it, the investment company had already been a customer of Mountain View, Calif.-based PlaceWare Inc. for the past 18 months. T. Rowe Price used PlaceWare's Web conferencing service to handle meetings with clients and employees.
PlaceWare facilitates online meetings through a variety of Web applications, including presentation content, audio conferencing and virtual office collaboration; its Meeting Center 2000 software starts at $5,000 a year.