Many of the year-end prediction blogs and news stories I read highlighted corporate video as a market that would be red hot moving into 2010. Well we're still in the first month of 2010 and we've already had three major announcements involving video. These are SEN's partnership with Polycom, Juniper's partnership and reference architecture for Polycom and Cisco's latest Telepresence announcement regarding its interoperability protocol. Seeing how 2010 has kicked off, one might believe that 2010 will indeed be the year that video finally becomes a mainstream corporate collaboration tool.However, despite the hype and these announcements, I still think there are some significant barriers to video becoming a widespread corporate collaboration tool. Now, I will admit I've historically been a video skeptic, primarily because of my experience with it when I was in corporate IT. I was the guy punching holes in firewalls, rolling around video systems and trying to figure out why the audio and video synchronization was off. Then I had to listen to end users complain about the experience and answer questions to senior management as to why people weren't using the systems we spend tens of thousands of dollars on. But, I will admit, that since those days, video has evolved by leaps and bounds. The systems are easier to use, the quality is better and the variety of choices is broader than it ever has been.
So why am I still skeptical? The reasons are as follows:
* Historical bias. Despite the improvements, many IT and business leaders who invested money in systems that didn't get used in years past maintain the same or greater skepticism that I have. Earlier this month I was chatting with an IT leader that was pushing for greater user of video within his own organization but couldn't get the business leaders past the memories of high-cost room based systems that had low utilization. He did feel, if he could get the business units to try it, they would see the value, but that was a huge hurdle to cross. Classic chicken and egg problem.
* It's not a spontaneous tool yet. When I need to communicate with someone, I'll send the typical "are you there?" instant message. If the person is there, I can follow up with a quick question, ask if I can call or maybe even ask them to check an email. What I don't do is ask them if they can run down and see if the telepresence room is being used or even ask if they have a webcam hooked up and connected through Skype or some other tool. This means the use of video is currently limited to planned sessions, which in itself is fine, but it's not a spontaneous collaboration tool.
* Metcalf's Law. This law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes on the network. There are lots of video nodes in existence today but they're not connected nodes, meaning Metcalf's Law doesn't apply. Video is still primarily an internal collaboration tool, meaning the world is filled with a whole bunch of video islands that need to be connected to raise the value.
* Interoperability is still an issue. This is an area that has improved over the past couple of years but it's still not a trivial matter to connect systems from different manufacturers. In fact, in some cases it can be difficult to connect systems from the same manufacturer.
The vision for video would be similar to what we have with telephony: any device, any network at any time and the quality of experience is the lowest common denominator. For example, I can make a call from my mobile phone to someone that might have a thousand dollar HD IP phone. We'll both experience cell phone quality but we can at least talk. If I hang up and call back from my own HD phone, we'll get HD audio. There's no thought as to what vendor's phone system I have or what network the other person is on, it just works. For this to happen, the industry needs to have the following happen:
* Interoperability needs to be seamless across systems and across vendors. Cisco's Telepresence Interoperability Protocol is a good start but the one vendor notable by its absence is Polycom. One could look at Cisco's announcement as Cisco pushing a proprietary protocol for its own benefit. While I'm sure this is partially true, I do think Cisco realizes that if seamless interoperability did exist, video would become a rising tide that would lift all boats--so Polycom, either adhere to the Cisco protocol or develop your own and get it into the standards bodies. Interoperability should also extend across the network vendors. When I was being briefed recently by Juniper and Polycom on their announcement, I asked if what they were announcing would extend across different network vendors. The answer I was given was that many of the principles would apply cross network vendor but the best possible experience would be when it was Polycom running on a Juniper network. That might help specific implementations out but in some ways, is just another example of vendor lock in (albeit two vendors instead of one).
* B2B video needs to become a reality. As I mentioned earlier, part of the problem with video is that it's difficult to connect systems in distinct organizations. There is currently no tool to understand which other organizations might have it. Last year, we saw several carriers announce multi customer Telepresence. This is a good start but this needs to extend cross carrier as well. Most of the operators I have talked to say they're looking at this but there's very little basic interoperability (for example, sharing MPLS tags) being done between network operators--so while they talk the talk, its time the telcos walked the walk. They need to allow video cross carrier and contribute to some sort of global directory that would allow customers to quickly indentify who they can video with. * People need to try the systems again. Even though I have a historical bias, I have to admit, when a video session works well, especially a Telepresence session, it really is almost like being there. It's not something that can be shown on Power Points or described in a blog. People need to experience the solutions in order to fully understand how it's different.
I do believe that all the barriers I have outlined will fall in time and we'll have that Star Trek experience when Kirk (or Picard but not Janeway, didn't like her as a captain) barks "on screen" and his voice session turns into a video session at the push of a button. For this to happen though, all of the players across the industry--network infrastructure vendors, video end point vendors, UC solution providers and telecom operators--need to work together to "make it so" (I couldn't resist the Picard reference). It will create more choices for customers, it will remove some of the lock in vendors have today. On the surface this might look bad for one of the market leaders but ultimately it will create that rising tide where everyone in the ecosystem benefits.
