PlaceWare Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp. and a Real-Time Collaboration Solutions provider, today announced that Sigaba, a leading provider of secure messaging solutions, including e-mail, instant messaging and document delivery, has seen incredible results using PlaceWare to hold public Web seminars, saving up to $25,000 per event.

Sigaba holds two public virtual events per quarter to help it establish thought leadership in vertical markets such as healthcare and financial services. A Sigaba customer is invited to be the featured guest speaker, and a company spokesperson acts as host. Before adopting PlaceWare, Sigaba had planned to do face-to-face seminars in major cities, but when the company compared the cost with that of a PlaceWare event, it found the difference to be up to $25,000 per event. In addition, the company found that drawing attendees to an in-person event, which means taking them away from their offices for at least a few hours, is much more difficult than attracting them to a one-hour PlaceWare event they can participate in from their own offices. Attendees can connect using a Web browser and Internet connection, and get the desired information in a fraction of the time via PlaceWare.