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Top Three Trends in Video Conferencing

Just when you thought the hype around video conferencing couldn't get any stronger, along comes a difficult-to-pronounce volcano in Iceland that has forced companies to scramble for contingency plans when in-person meetings become impossible. Once again we hear the drumbeat to investigate video as an alternative to travel, just as we did in 2008-09 when the recession drove companies to look harder at video as a way of either reducing travel budgets, or supporting collaboration among distributed workers unable to meet in person.As video conferencing finally goes mainstream, I thought it useful to put together some of the biggest trends we've seen in video conferencing adoption based on our recent research and numerous consulting engagements to assist companies in planning their video and UC strategies.

1.) Video adoption is increasing in response to three converging trends: Video quality is improving while costs are falling; video offers improved collaboration experience for distributed workers and, therefore, demonstrable business benefit; and video as a substitution for travel, given declining travel budgets.

IT executives consistently state two key business drivers for videoconferencing adoption: the need to improve collaboration for an increasingly virtual workforce, and the desire to use video to reduce, or offset, reductions in travel spending. Senior executives, for example, tout telepresence as enabling highly interactive virtual meetings without the need for lost hours spent on airplanes. Meanwhile room-based and desktop systems provide effective meetings by allowing for verbal as well as non-verbal communications, and by reducing multitasking as participants engage in more natural discussion instead of simply staring at their telephone, or using meeting time to work on other tasks.

None of these drivers for increased videoconferencing adoption would mean anything if not for a third factor; falling cost coupled with improved quality. High-definition video has made the leap from home theater to home and office, with room-based HD systems starting at a list price of less than $4,000 per room (for camera and codec), while high-definition desktop applications are now emerging from a number of vendors. Costs are falling for telepresence as well, though mean prices for system and setup still average approximately $250,000-300,000 per room (plus ongoing costs for maintenance, support, and bandwidth).

2.) Videoconferencing systems are rapidly moving to the session initiation protocol (SIP) and integrating into Unified Communications architectures.

Now that SIP is well entrenched as the de-facto signaling standard for voice and UC applications, we're seeing a strong uptick in interest in using SIP to integrate video systems with other UC applications. Numerous companies are working on integrating their Polycom & Tandberg room systems with Avaya, Microsoft OCS, IBM Sametime, or Cisco UC systems. We've noted a number of recent partnership announcements as video increasingly becomes an integral part of an overall UC strategy.

3.) Managed VNOC (video network operations), dedicated bandwidth, and extranet connectivity are increasingly part of a videoconferencing architecture

For telepresence, most customers turn to service providers to obtain dedicated bandwidth. This is because telepresence requires a great deal of bandwidth; up to 6 Mbps per-screen, per-room. IT managers also see telepresence as a high-profile application. When a company has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to deliver a premium videoconferencing solution often utilized by top executives, IT job security depends on delivering a high quality user experience. IT architects simply do not want to take the chance of interrupting a critical telepresence session among executives, customers, and/or partners because of issues on the data network. Despite increasing deployment of technologies such as WAN optimization and QoS, they simply are not willing to chance a network-related issue disrupting a telepresence session.

It is a different story for room-based conferencing systems where the ROI for deployment is often based on cost savings from eliminating dedicated ISDN circuit and usage expenses. Those deploying desktop applications also rely on existing LAN and WAN bandwidth, though the ability to create policies that limit bandwidth consumption of desktop videoconferencing applications is a key requirement for deployment.

Despite differences in bandwidth provisioning, a common characteristic among users of all types of videoconferencing systems is the need for performance and system management. Most IT managers have not made any specific investment in dedicated video quality management tools. Instead, they rely on a combination of overlay bandwidth for telepresence and class-of-service prioritization or WAN optimization for other video applications. They lack in-depth management and reporting tools to support quality of experience metrics such as pixilation, dropouts, or dropped video sessions.

As a result, companies are increasingly turning to managed service providers as a lower cost alternative to buying their own management platforms, training staff, and devoting time to administration. IT architects learned from VOIP that supporting real-time media applications over IP involved more than just turning on QoS. As such, they increasingly look to professional and/or managed service partners that already have the expertise to manage video quality across multiple locations as well as integrate multi-vendor environments.

Taken together these top three tasks sum up to "video is growing", "integration with UC is key", and "don't forget about quality and performance management." Address all of these trends in your plans, and youll be ready for the next eruption of ash and smoke from Iceland.