Operating System independence and the death of web conferencing applications like WebEx are in the near future. Macromedia and HP announced a new partnership today and after viewing the fast paced demo I was blown away, or at least any office manager would be. The idea is to use Flash Platform to connect various members of an office and their software. The overall platform seems to utilize Breeze to conference users and share desktops. Flash allows the employees of the demo company to connect sans OS and even without web browsers. Given what we already know about Flash, a large organization could buy any computer equipment they want (Mac or PC) and install their application across the network, then the user can login via Flash. Of course this is an HP initiative so I'm sure they reccommend you use their PC's, but I'll bet you could add non-HP equip to the network easily. Watching the demo shows users on HP Pocket PCs conferencing with a main location. Again I see this as a WebEx killer. Why use a Power Point Presentation and desktop sharing that is possibly tied to a web browser and to an operating system when you can conference with all users via any OS and possibly any equipment using Flash Player, Flash Player for Pocket PC and maybe even Flash Lite Player. It will be interesting to see how other companies react to this new partnership. Companies like BMC (help desk software) and Oracle may start promoting web services more so they can become the backend partners for Flash on HP servers and equipment.