Video Conferencing: Next Gen Communication

Reality Bites
After a decade of languishing in the dark corners of the communication market, telepresence emerged as the most promising conferencing trend in 2006. After the launch of HP's Halo, Cisco launched its Telepresence Meeting System solution along with Polycom's real presence solutions RPX series. These solutions added a new meaning to two-way interactive visual communication and exceeded the boundaries of traditional videoconferencing system. Interest of fortune 500 companies in high performance immersive visual communications that are highly reliable and easy to use has given a much required take off to the telepresence segment, despite the high initial costs and operating costs of such systems.

Opportunities and Challenges

Drivers

Availability of bandwidth and their declining costs
Today various application available on which enhance the use of hardware and bandwidth
Development in middleware which is able to help various technology to speak to each other
Dispersed teams, which are using different technology to communicate, and their need to communicate to each other has acted as a catalyst in the growth of videoconferencing
Lot of technology brands which were working on any one domain of over all technology solution have seen the necessity of moving into this space to grow and enhance value to their customers

Challenges

Creating a modern and efficient telecommunications infrastructure taking into account the convergence of IT, media and telecom and consumer electronics
Technical knowledge: separated communications and conferencing technologies reside on different networks and, different platforms, requiring different management interfaces for support
Communications and collaboration technologies have become proprietary platforms that do not integrate with the existing network infrastructure
Challenges faced by IT managers in building and managing the IP infrastructure to guarantee performance
Managing the converged infrastructure, so that real-time applications such as voice and video have priority over less time-sensitive application such as Web surfing and email

In some cases, these products use a room-within-a-room environment along with life-size images, and high-definition resolution with spatial and discrete audio to create a live, face-to-face meeting around a single 'virtual' table. These systems use the standard IP technology deployed in corporations today, and run on an integrated voice/video/data network. Such systems support high-quality, real-time voice and video communications with branch offices using broadband connections. They also offer capabilities for ensuring quality of service (QoS), security, reliability, and high availability for high-bandwidth applications such as video, particularly high definition video, which can require 1Mbps to 5Mbps, depending upon the resolution.

Telepresence is a videoconferencing experience that creates the illusion that the remote participants are in the same room. There are four key elements that are kept in mind for generating this experience; these include high quality audio video, simplicity, high reliability and environmental excellence.

"Polycom truly believes that India is a ripe market for a space that is worth around $3 bn worldwide as per various research agencies. Potential applications would span across areas like boardroom meetings, corporate conferences, high-end surgeries, operation theaters, education and distance learning etc," says Yugal Sharma of Polycom.

Telepresence solutions are designed to deliver an all-immersive experience and typically require 4-24 Mbps of high performance and high QoS IP bandwidth. That usually means a dedicated network is required.

As more and more organizations join effective visual collaboration networks, the utility, value, and RoI of being connected to these networks grow, creating the same potential for exponential growth that characterized telephony and the Internet.

Over the next decade, virtually every Global 5000 Company will adopt a technology allowing them to interact with people, no matter how far away, as if they were in the same room. The technology is called telepresence, and a variety of Fortune 1000 organizations already started using it, reporting both satisfaction and a strong RoI.

Future Scope
"Videoconferencing is moving beyond corporate to the government sector, judiciary, distance learning, entertainment and telemedicine," says Shivashankar. There is an increased use of videoconferencing systems for interviewing candidates, interaction with relatives settled abroad, reviews and meetings, product launches, press conferences and auditioning actors. Videoconferencing promises applications also in healthcare, education, and government segments, as prices for hardware and bandwidth reduces and awareness about the technology spreads in the market.

Gone are the days of extended travel, waiting in long airport security lines, travel delays, inflated travel budgets and lost productivity. As organizations become more diverse in business applications, acquisitions and mergers become more common and multi-national work forces become the standard, decision makers are looking for ways to make communicating among their knowledge workers easy.

Collaborative technologies will enable business partners to easily switch back and forth from web, video and audio conferencing to see and hear each other and to share documents and information in real time. Today's enterprises are also looking forward to leading edge technology, flexible conferences, flexible deployment, common management suites, highly scalable solutions, secure VoIP conferencing, embedded multipoint options and videoconferencing solutions.

Today, networks are becoming increasingly scalable and enterprises are realizing the benefits of having all the applications on the network. The real impact of videoconferencing technology can only be realized when the user's experience is close to natural face-to-face meeting, and telepresence in this respect has already started revolutionizing room based videoconferencing services.

India will be one of the biggest markets worldwide for videoconferencing solutions. The enterprise user is getting financially stronger and as now they care competing globally, they need to be more productive and lower the costs of videoconferencing solutions.

Sonia Sharma
sonias@cybermedia.co.in