Macromedia: It's A Breeze

Macromedia's Breeze suite includes modules for building online presentations, creating and managing Web-delivered courseware and adding live discussions among participants.

A relative newcomer to the Web conferencing market, Breeze offers a number of advantages that competitive products,such as WebEx, Raindance and Genysys Conferencing,do not, such as rapid time to deployment, Macromedia's Flash technology, and "a large and growing base of millions of designers and developers that are fanatically loyal to Macromedia," said Yankee Group analyst Paul Ritter.

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Breeze Partner Program was launched recently under Menegay's direction.

For Jacqueline Beck, president of Brookwood Media Arts, Philadelphia, the big advantage to Macromedia's software is the speed with which it lets the solution provider move through courseware development. "[E-learning] programs are created in days instead of weeks or months," Beck said. "Our clients can provide on-demand learning instantly, track the results and archive the presentation, so the entire enterprise can access timely content immediately,but at their convenience."

The new version of Breeze will include enhanced collaboration features such as realtime polling and will enable solution providers to integrate Breeze with customers' existing applications. It is slated to ship in March.

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Breeze also can be offered as a hosted service. Customers can choose to buy either a trial version, starting at $84 per concurrent seat, per month, or a perpetual license, which starts at $22,500 for 25 concurrent seats.

The San Francisco-based company hired Michael Menegay in August to fill the new position of senior vice president of worldwide channels. Menegay previously ran channel programs for security vendor Network Associates.

Under Menegay's direction, Macromedia recently launched the Breeze Partner Program to help solution providers,particularly those in the e-learning and the small- to midsize-business markets,create opportunities for online conferencing and training, he said.

Menegay said about 73 percent of Macromedia's revenue comes from the channel, and the company hopes to maintain that percentage as it diversifies into new geographic and product markets, he said.