Video conferencing is a tool that brings in significant reductions in travel
expenses, giving the decision makers a space for digital convergence, bringing
them together for a live meeting. The technology holds tremendous promise within
the enterprise environment.
Expanded collaboration, where video would be integrated with voice and data
applications, has been widely anticipated as commercially feasible. But somehow
it never really materialized. Large enterprises have implemented video for group
conferencing applications, but video conferencing has often remained a niche
application running parallel to the core of an enterprise's communications
fabric. As expected with a specialized application, it found a useful place for
large meetings and presentations. However, challenges around quality and
reliability and ease of administration and use have limited its acceptance
within many businesses. In addition, collaboration tools such as electronic
blackboards, overhead projectors and fax capabilities never worked as a single
well-integrated application. As a result, enterprises were never able to realize
the potential benefits of video conferencing.
 |
| Mainstream deployment of
enterprise video conferencing must be built upon business case
justification |
However, a major development that recently occurred in the communications
environment. It is likely to break down the limitations that have suppressed the
growth of video conferencing. The migration to converged IP networks and the
spread of IP Telephony has provided a receptive platform infrastructure that can
enable video to become a fully integrated element in the telephony environment.
This platform, combined with the technological advancements in video and
collaboration tools are ushering in a new era of video telephony. Video
telephony technology is now ready for prime time within the enterprise
communication environment. Here it is worth mentioning that many hurdles have
been overcome to reach to the mainstream video telephony by deploying new video
conferencing technologies.
The Convergence of Video and IP Telephony
A number of changes have occurred recently that are stimulating an increased
interest in video conferencing as a mainstream business application. The first
change has been the growing deployment in businesses of IP Telephony based upon
converging voice and data networks into a single integrated and robust network
with enough bandwidth to accommodate video applications. By creating a
networking layer that can easily incorporate video streams into its transport
mechanisms, the move to IP networks has broken down one of the technical
barriers to broader deployment of video conferencing.
A second change enabled by IP telephony is the ability to set up sessions
that can carry multiple media streams while using telephony and windows based
interfaces to achieve click-to-dial video conferencing setups between parties on
the conference. Multi-party conferences can also be set up using video bridge
technologies in a similar fashion.
A final factor that facilitates the ease of use for video conferencing is the
incorporation of SIP enabled presence in soft phone applications. This
technology allows users at their desktops trying to set up a video conference to
know if the person they are connecting to has the ability to enable a video call
from their end. Video conferencing can be easily added to a voice call by simply
activating the video application on each end of the existing call. The migration
to IP telephony along with the incorporation of standards based interfaces to
other applications promises to open the door to a rapid expansion of video
conferencing. Ironically, video conferencing is being discovered as a “new”
IP enabled productivity application.
In addition, the extension of business telephony features to endpoint devices
makes video calling as natural as voice calling. During all this it provides
enterprise class call handling capabilities and scalability. For example, users
now can have the ability to setup a call coverage path for a video call in the
same way and with the same capabilities as a voice call. If somebody calls on a
video endpoint and the called party is not at their desk, a coverage path would
direct the call to voicemail or a coverage assistant. The system can recognize
whether the receiving endpoint (ie voicemail system or coverage assistant) has
video capabilities. If not, the call would fall back to a voice only call. Easy
call set up and coverage features are taken for granted in voice communications
systems but have not been available for video until now.
Wainhouse Research recently projected a five year compound growth rate of
over 18% for enterprise video conferencing and a 40% growth rate in the personal
video conferencing category that includes the integration of video into
enterprise desktop software, based upon 2004 and 2005 results.
The ability to expand video conferencing to any IP telephony connection has the
potential to deliver substantial business and employee productivity value to
enterprises. Extending video interaction to employee conferences can make
sessions more focused, productive and potentially shorter as clarity and real
time decision-making are facilitated. It also promises to enhance the
development of personal relationships – particularly with colleagues,
distribution partners, clients and suppliers. By increasing ease of use
including the use of ad hoc sessions and eliminating the requirement to leave
one's office to achieve a video connection, video conferencing is likely to
become incorporated as integral part of everyday operations facilitating new
ways of doing business.
Customer Requirements for a Video Telephony Solution
While the convergence of technology trends has enabled the arrival of mainstream
video conferencing application capability, to achieve mass acceptance and
deployment, communications applications providers will need to address
requirements at three levels. The next generation of video conferencing will
have to address overall business drivers, cost and manageability requirements of
an enterprise's IT group and finally the usability requirements of employees.
No matter how impressive new technology capabilities might be, they need to
justify their acquisition by rationalizing how they serve enterprise business
objectives. Mainstream deployment of enterprise video conferencing must be built
upon business case justification that includes facilitating global business
growth, decreasing or offsetting existing business costs, improving employee
productivity and enabling virtual business models with highly mobile workforce
groups.
The next threshold that must be addressed is the specific requirements of IT
decision makers in adopting widespread application deployment. IT managers
require applications that are easy to install, operate and manage. New
applications must also integrate easily with their existing network and
applications infrastructure and leverage that infrastructure and thereby
increase its value and payback. Open standards are often a critical requirement
for new applications because it facilitates integration and prevents vendor 'Lock-in'.
Finally, IT managers are concerned about the economic payback for new
application deployment that dovetails with enterprise business objectives. The
third set of requirements that video conferencing must address is meeting the
needs of the employee user community. New technology acceptance and adoption can
sometimes be pushed from power user communities who are driving for greater
personal productivity tools. Widespread user adoption of desktop video
conferencing will require that the application be simple, easy and convenient to
use. It must also markedly improve personal productivity, enhance working
relationships, and lead to faster and more efficient decision making among
collaborative groups within the enterprise.
Video conferencing tightly integrated with telephony has the potential to
meet the business, IT, and user requirements. It will open it up to an
impressive adoption rate over the next few years and move the application from a
specialty to a mainstream productivity tool.
Richard Kent and Harold Tepper
Courstesy: Polycom
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