Recent weeks have seen a slew of activity in the video conferencing space, moves all predicated on the belief that the technology is poised for rapid expansion across desktops, mobile devices, into the small conference room and huddle space, and even into the world of digital business and Internet of Things.
Enterprises are increasingly looking to forgo capital-intensive expenditures by moving multipoint control units and management services to the cloud, and video conferencing solution vendors want to ride the wave. With that we've seen moves such as:
Nemertes has tracked the video conferencing market for several years, noting the following trends:
Cloud video conferencing continues to grow. About 38% of participants in our most recent benchmark are already using a cloud video conferencing platform, and another 7% plan to do so in 2016. IT leaders see a number of advantages to cloud -- reducing CapEx as previously noted, flexibility in allocating costs of multi-party video conferencing to business units, increased speed of deployment, support for features like browser-based conferencing and mobile clients, the ability to support conferences that include a myriad of different endpoints from a variety of vendors, and most importantly, the ease of holding video conferences that include external participants.
Desktop/mobile stalled, but poised for growth. Each year we ask participants about their plans around extending video conferencing to desktop and mobile users. Much of the expansion is organic as video conferencing becomes a standard feature in UC and Web conferencing applications, but actual usage still remains low. Participants tell us that around 10% of employees use desktop video conferencing at least once a week, while even smaller percentages regularly participate in video conferences from their smartphones or tablets. However, most say they expect usage across desktops and tablets to increase in 2016 while just 43% expect to see smartphone video conferencing growth.
Room system deployments continue to grow. Half of participants say they are increasing the number of room systems, largely as a result of employee demand for wider access to video conferencing. Nearly 42% say room system utilization rates are growing while the rest say they're flat (nobody is seeing a decline in room system use). Following Metcalfe's law that the value of the network increases as the network grows, so too does demand for access to video conferencing rooms increase as the ways that participants, especially remote workers and customers, can participate in video sessions.
Companies continue to struggle to measure video's value. One surprising data point from our benchmark is that slightly less than 18% of participants refresh their room systems at least every three years. About 41% have no formal refresh program. Senior IT and business leaders still often see video conferencing as a luxury, and not something that contributes in a quantifiable way to the bottom line by either increasing revenue or decreasing cost.
For a long time the standard way of measuring value was by using video conferencing to offset travel costs. But as video access expands, IT and business leaders are looking for ways to analyze metrics like employee and team performance correlated with video use. The goal is to determine if those who are using video extensively are delivering measurable performance gains. Conferencing providers, and their partners, have a tremendous opportunity to provide ways to look at utilization and its impact on overall organizational performance.
Video will expand beyond conferencing. Almost 58% of participants have active programs underway to evaluate video's use in improving specific business processes. These efforts range from security to field worker support, telemedicine, public safety, and much, much more. One can expect video to become a core component of the shift to digital business as part of an Internet of Things strategy.
IT leaders should continue making expanded access to video conferencing core to their overall collaboration strategies. They should be leveraging emerging endpoint and cloud options to enable interoperability, provide access to external partners and customers, and reduce costs. But most importantly, they should look at video's ability to improve not just collaboration, but business processes, too, and to deliver measurable value to their organizations.
Learn more about video conferencing trends and technologies at Enterprise Connect 2016, March 7 to 10, in Orlando, Fla. View the Video track sessions; register now using the code NJPOST to receive $200 off the current conference price.
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