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For anyone needing a little face-to-face time with the honchos at head office halfway around the globe, the range of video conferencing options – not to mention their quality – is a far cry from what it was just a few years ago.

These days it's called telepresence. High-end providers offer Hollywood-quality studios that they claim replicate a real meeting environment. For Hewlett-Packard's Halo, for example, a typical studio setup includes three broadcast-quality cameras, three ultra-sensitive microphones, three 60-inch plasma screens, an Internet protocol (VoIP) phone, a table that seats six and ambient back-lighting.

Naturally, this elaborate setup has a steep price: between $329,000 (U.S.) and $399,000 for each location, not including an $18,000 monthly service fee.

Designed to emulate an actual meeting room, these sight-and-sound chambers create a unique interactive appearance. You might actually think you're in the room across the table from colleagues who are sitting in a similar studio across the globe.

And for companies such as H.J. Heinz Co., PepsiCo Inc. and General Electric Co., the latest telepresence systems offered by HP and Cisco Systems Inc. are changing the quality of remote meetings.

But at these prices, telepresence is clearly not for the mass market.

“We expect companies will see value in telepresence when they have big headquarters in dual offices,” says Jeffrey Mann, Gartner Inc.'s primary analyst on Web collaboration. “If your big execs travel twice a month from Tokyo to Toronto, that time and expense may add up to the point where telepresence makes sense.”

However, many smaller businesses with less of a need for an expensive virtual meeting room still find speaking face-to-face with colleagues or clients has invaluable benefit.

“For a mid-size company like ours, [HP and Cisco's telepresence products] are overkill,” says Daniel Kushner, director of e-business at Richmond Hill, Ont.-based medical aesthetics manufacturer Syneron.

Like many other small to medium-sized businesses, Mr. Kushner's organization chose from among the leading Web collaboration service providers such as WebEx (which is owned by Cisco), Microsoft's Live Meeting and Citrix's GoToMeeting.

These products' core offerings include desktop sharing, text chat, shared whiteboard, and basic security, while integrated phone audio or VoIP and video conferencing are common.

For most small businesses, the cheaper options are generally sufficient.

“If 90 per cent of the time what you want to do is share a PowerPoint presentation on the Web, they all do that just fine,” Mr. Mann says. “Typically, the other features don't matter too much because they don't get used.”

The competition for telepresence products and services in the small and medium-sized business markets are significant. The global Web conferencing market was estimated at almost $1-billion in 2006 and forecast to reach almost $3-billion in 2011, according to Frost and Sullivan. As the small and medium-sized business market matures, the purchase decision is getting easier.

“Many companies aren't effectively making a choice, they're going with their current technology provider,” Mr. Mann says. “If you're a Microsoft shop, you go with Live Meeting. If you use Cisco, you'll choose MeetingPlace, and so on.”

This pattern will likely be further fuelled by Cisco's acquisition of WebEx in March. More consolidation may occur as businesses increasingly embrace Web conferencing technology.

By 2010, 60 per cent of companies using Web conferencing will acquire this capability as part of a larger suite of applications, rather than from a specialist vendor, according to Gartner.

All things being equal, the purchase decision criteria for the average business will come down to a few simple factors: ease of use, cost and experience quality. For Syneron, GoToMeeting was the right choice because of the product's simplicity, as well as easy compatibility with their VoIP client of choice, Skype.

“I like to have a tool that fits the job, and knows how to do its job extremely well,” Mr. Kushner says. “The match between Skype and GoToMeeting is perfect for us. You can start a Skype chat and then launch a GoToMeeting with one click of a button.”

Pricing for the popular suites starts at as little as $39 (U.S.) a month with several per-minute or per-person options.

Special to The Globe and Mail