Perhaps it's the holiday season or maybe it's the hubbub surrounding unified communications and collaboration lately, but folks are getting nostalgic on us about VoIP. The experiences of those heady days of the early 2000s hold lessons and watch points for what's happening in UC&C today, we're told.
Phil Edholm, president and founder of PKE Consulting, for example, recalled Nortel's decision to label its newly created CS1000 (which still lives on under Avaya's care and feeding, as No Jitter blogger Andrew Prokop wrote yesterday) as an IP-PBX rather than a hybrid platform combining TDM and IP. Nortel did so to fight against Cisco, which came to market with a pure-play IP-PBX and messaging that derided the efficacy of "bolting VoIP to an existing PBX," as Edholm wrote. Nortel's strategy worked just fine, for a few years. The company's decision to extend the CS1000 to a hybrid platform name caused all sorts of confusion down the road, he recounted.
While Edholm harkens back to VoIP's rise from a branding and positioning angle, Michael Frendo, executive vice president of worldwide engineering for Polycom, does so from a technology perspective. That state of VoIP technology in the mid 2000s is quite similar to where we are today with the state of video technology, Frendo told me in a recent interview.
"Considering quality of service, bigger pipes, the powering of endpoints, and standardization coming in browsers -- we're in a similar place as we were in 2006 with VoIP," he said. "The doors are opening."
This is playing out in a five trends Frendo has been watching since arriving at Polycom about seven months ago:
1. Fast pace to pervasiveness - The rise of consumer-friendly, video-capable endpoints and browsers coupled with the widespread availability of LTE, WiFi and other broadband services is accelerating the pace of multimedia collaboration, Frendo said. This means many companies are scrambling to figure out how a collaborative session should look and feel. "We still need people in rooms using whiteboards... but then there's the guy calling in from the coffee shop, too." Cloud-based video providers have lots of opportunity here, he added.
2. Content is king - Many enterprises tell Polycom that, for them, audio conferencing comes first and video conferencing third, with content sandwiched in-between the two, Frendo said. That means providing users the ability to share multiple pieces of content during a conferencing session is high on the company's agenda for 2015, Frendo said.
"You'll be seeing a lot of innovation in this space coming up," he suggested. "Content sharing has to become more seamless."
3. Embedded video - More and more, Frendo said, enterprises are expecting video integrated into their workflows. Polycom sees quite a bit of this with Salesforce.com integration, but also in specific verticals like medical and human resources. Allowing a "push for video session" capability, for example, HR firms can conduct video interviews from HR applications without requiring users to install specialty software.
4. Busy rooms - Admittedly, the market for room-based video systems -- those typical of the "two screens and bowling alley" format -- is flat, Frendo noted. However, Polycom is seeing increased use of the room systems installed in the enterprise. Some customers are reporting usage of their room systems at 80% to 90%, he said.
5. Where's the video? - As users get more comfortable with video, they're starting to expect a conferencing session to be more than audio. As a result, Frendo added, video conference will really start expanding beyond the enterprise and be used among business partners and in consumer engagements, as well.
1. Fast pace to pervasiveness - The rise of consumer-friendly, video-capable endpoints and browsers coupled with the widespread availability of LTE, WiFi and other broadband services is accelerating the pace of multimedia collaboration, Frendo said. This means many companies are scrambling to figure out how a collaborative session should look and feel. "We still need people in rooms using whiteboards... but then there's the guy calling in from the coffee shop, too." Cloud-based video providers have lots of opportunity here, he added.
2. Content is king - Many enterprises tell Polycom that, for them, audio conferencing comes first and video conferencing third, with content sandwiched in-between the two, Frendo said. That means providing users the ability to share multiple pieces of content during a conferencing session is high on the company's agenda for 2015, Frendo said.
"You'll be seeing a lot of innovation in this space coming up," he suggested. "Content sharing has to become more seamless."
3. Embedded video - More and more, Frendo said, enterprises are expecting video integrated into their workflows. Polycom sees quite a bit of this with Salesforce.com integration, but also in specific verticals like medical and human resources. Allowing a "push for video session" capability, for example, HR firms can conduct video interviews from HR applications without requiring users to install specialty software.
4. Busy rooms - Admittedly, the market for room-based video systems -- those typical of the "two screens and bowling alley" format -- is flat, Frendo noted. However, Polycom is seeing increased use of the room systems installed in the enterprise. Some customers are reporting usage of their room systems at 80% to 90%, he said.
5. Where's the video? - As users get more comfortable with video, they're starting to expect a conferencing session to be more than audio. As a result, Frendo added, video conference will really start expanding beyond the enterprise and be used among business partners and in consumer engagements, as well.
Of course, these trends don't come without challenges -- like standardization. But, with ongoing work on WebRTC, the barriers are coming down (read WebRTC Video Harmony at Last?). But, Frendo said, "real-time communications has always been the fun part of this business."
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