Place-to-face

Evolving technology and the recent Icelandic ash cloud disrupting travel has brought the issue of video conferencing into sharper focus. CXO hears four industry experts discuss the business benefits offered by video conferencing technology.

“The delivery of voice and video communications applications requires a different approach to management.”
-Anthony Finbow

How can today's video conferencing technology enable companies to save travel and communication costs?

Clive Sawkins. As the environment for collaboration is changing, the 'tried and true' collaboration method of face-to-face meetings has become too costly and has a huge impact on employee productivity. Companies now need collaboration technologies that allow anyone, anywhere, anytime, and on any connected device to work together. With the potential for significant reduction in travel expenses and the ability to conduct productive meetings leading to efficient and effective decision-making, videoconferencing is fast emerging as one of the most feasible enterprise collaboration technology.

Today's videoconferencing and telepresence solutions enable companies to have an immersive experience that is very close to a face-to-face meeting experience. While face-to-face meetings require customers or employees of a company to travel, arrange for hotels and transport - in addition to the productivity loss and stress resulting from airport security and delays, traffic, spending hours just to get to a business meeting lasting an hour or two - a video conference meeting can be conducted with greater ease without leaving the comfort of one's office.

In addition to this, if a company has implemented the right video infrastructure and has also engaged with a managed service provider to manage their day-to-day visual collaboration needs, the managed service provider can provide the company with videoconferencing services that are easy-to-use by their employees at all levels, irrespective of their technical knowledge, resulting in enhanced employee productivity, improved collaboration, and reduced business costs.

Anthony Finbow. Globally active and distributed businesses are increasingly turning to IP based video conferencing - a key pillar of the new enterprise communications architecture - as a mechanism to significantly reduce travel costs and achieve working productivity gains. There is a clear business case for various industry verticals from manufacturing, where globally distributed design teams are able to collaborate more effectively in real time using the medium, to legal services where witnesses may be required to testify remotely, before a jury, over video conferencing link. The rapid evolution of Sales 2.0 methodologies, where the use of video conferencing is supplanting traditional face to face meetings for many customer interactions, is also an area of significant growth for the technology. Despite some scepticism, the evidence shows that sales yields are maintained and cost of sale significantly reduced through the use of the medium, which enables many more interactions with customers, or potential customers, than might otherwise be possible.

A further efficiency can come through the delivery of video communications as yet another application over a common IP network infrastructure. This holds the promise of significant cost savings but to realise such savings requires that both real time voice and video communications be managed as a distinct class of applications. In all cases user experience and, therefore, Quality of Experience-based service management is key. The challenge of the IT manager is to deliver the required experience without consuming all available network bandwidth, thereby compromising the delivery of other applications over the infrastructure, eradicating the envisaged cost savings and potentially damaging the business.

Janne Lauanne. Much more important than merely saving travel costs is the significant and comprehensive benefit that companies gain by deploying distance working technology on a large scale and introducing a new virtual way of working. This new way of working will very positively affect utilisation of different resources and increase productivity.

We are no longer talking about saving travel costs, but managing the company's resources and operations in such a way that facilitate the organisation to do three times more with the same knowledge worker headcount than what they managed to do before introducing the new virtual way of working.

Virtual way of working means being able to take the needed meetings anytime and anywhere. Instead of booking meetings weeks ahead it usually is possible to take a virtual meeting during the next few days, maybe even the same day. It's just so much easier to book one hour in your colleagues' calendars than to try to book an entire day for the meeting.

Jonathan Tracey. Video conferencing technology has been an unrealised goal for many companies for a long time as technology has always failed to deliver on the expectations of an in-person meeting. Business travel has been seen as the only choice.

In 2005, LifeSize offered a viable alternative to business travel by bringing to the market the World's first high definition (HD) video communications technology.

Now with the wide adoption of HD technology, businesses are able to have face-to-face meetings that are close to a real meeting experience, reducing the need for time-consuming and costly travel.

Now the technology gap is closing the process of educating users to consider using video must begin, simple to use systems are a must: if it's too complicated to use, people will not take the time to learn.

As the cost of systems comes down and the quality of the experience rises, a simple return on investment calculation can show systems paying for themselves in a few short weeks. In addition, systems that are easier to use encourage more widespread usage across organisations, which not only further reduces travel expenditures, but can also boost employee morale and productivity.

These factors, coupled with improvements in the reliability of the technology, have allowed businesses to change the way they work and become significantly more effective without incurring the costs of long distance travel.

Concerns about the impersonal nature of virtual meetings and about privacy prevents some companies from partaking in video conferencing. How would you allay these fears?

CS. Though the concerns around the impersonal nature of using virtual collaboration as a business tool are pretty mixed depending on the type and size of a company or the applications it is used for, these tend to nearly disappear as usage within an enterprise increases and the business begins to see the value and benefits that visual collaboration technologies like videoconferencing and telepresence can provide.

AF. HD video and wideband - or HD - voice are quickly becoming the standard for all but desktop video conferencing. Further advances in camera technology and placement and the effective design of the video conferencing space make it possible to conduct even the most demanding of meetings using this medium. Telepresence, by definition, aims to replicate the face-to-face meeting as much as is possible. Privacy is also an important issue but the application of the technology to such fields as Telemedicine, for instance, is a testament to how far the industry has come in addressing the issues. The video conference will not replace the face-to-face meeting for all important interactions, but it enables many more interactions than might otherwise be possible, and it provides a richer communications experience than a pure voicecall.

JL. Impersonal could also be applied to audio conferencing. Having to conduct a longer conference call with say six or more people and listening to the bad quality audio is not something you want to do too often. On the other hand, there is nothing impersonal about having high definition video meetings where you feel like you are in the same meeting room with the other participants.

This level can be reached by utilising the latest high definition video conferencing systems, certainly immersive telepresence studios and even the latest high definition desktop solutions, all of which Videra's Virtual Office service offers. Those who doubt this should take a demo on the latest solutions.

For those who are worried about the privacy: taking part in a video call is as private as taking part in a face-to-face meeting where people are physically present, with a bonus of having the possibility to mute your microphone and steer the camera so that you can't be seen by the other participants.

JT. With the advent of HD, the video meeting experience is as close to being in the room with someone as it is possible to achieve. HD video allows you to see every movement and every gesture. The easy-to-use, intuitive interface invites interaction and encourages continued use. Dramatically increased usage means enhanced communication and greater productivity.

To ensure confidentiality, modern cryptographic technology allows real time encryption of sensitive meetings over any network to help allay any privacy fears. This technology is seamless, so from the user's perspective it all happens in the background.

How can companies be sure that technology blips will not interfere in the video conferencing experience?

CS. For companies that want to implement an effective videoconferencing or telepresence solution, there are five key points to understand. The first is to define the enterprise visual collaboration strategy: Develop a comprehensive enterprise visual collaboration strategy with an emphasis on making videoconferencing or telepresence a mainstream collaboration tool within the enterprise. Secondly, define the enterprise inter-company B2B visual collaboration strategy: In addition to having a strategy for intra-company visual collaboration, it is of vital importance to define the corporate goals, policies and strategy for enabling inter-company B2B visual communications with customers, suppliers and partners.

The third thing is to select the right network: Determine a network that is right for the enterprise in terms of technology, network availability at desired locations, bandwidth required, and costs based on usage. Fourthly, selecting the right video equipment will help greatly: determine the video equipment that is required to make it all work, including selecting the right vendor, the right video infrastructure, the right boardroom system, the right desktop system etc. Lastly, employ the services of a Managed Service Provider (MSP): A MSP can be a key enabler in providing the company with a high-quality, reliable and consistent service. In addition to this, the advantages of engaging a MSP can result in improved effective and efficient operations, including: managing the service on a day-to-day basis thus reducing the burden on in-house resources, making the service easy-to-use resulting in increased video usage adoption, and providing value-added video concierge services that enhance the videoconferencing meeting experience - in addition to converting all CAPEX to OPEX over a period of time.

AF. The delivery of voice and video communications applications requires a different approach to management. It is not sufficient to just manage network performance, using traditional IP QoS tools and then just expect user experience to be satisfactory. Service management based on users' quality of experience is now broadly accepted across the industry as the way to ensure optimum performance and enable effective troubleshooting in the event of service issues. Without the right tools, the cost savings and productivity enhancements, which drive the business case for adoption of video conferencing solutions are compromised, with potentially damaging consequences for a business. The emergence of 'the new enterprise communications architecture', incorporating IP telephony, voice and video softclient architectures, Unified Communications, desktop and boardroom video collaboration elements, all required to interoperate effectively, is driving businesses to adopt to solutions to enable this approach to service management.

JL. Technology blips have been one of the major hurdles for the industry and to prevent the 'technology factor' from hindering the adoption of remote meetings and the new virtual way of working, companies are changing their purchase behaviour and demand services instead of hardware. Video conferencing has in many organisations already reached a business critical role that is underlying this trend. Companies want to work with a service provider rather than with a hardware reseller as services offer SLAs, availability guarantees and sanctions if the service levels are not met.

In general technology is continuously developing, which also makes video more dependable. While video quality today is full high definition, the bandwidth consumed is the same as what a few years ago was needed for standard definition video with a fraction of the amount of pixels used today. Still, it is just technology that someone needs to make work.

JT. People expect technology to work - every time. Pick up a phone anywhere in the world, dial and connect instantly without a thought to the technical feats behind it. There is no thought about scheduling the call, or the amount of network traffic. You want to communicate when the time is right for you.

LifeSize brings to the table a unique collection of technologies that help disguise common issues found on many networks to ensure a seamless video meeting experience. These include packet loss concealment algorithms, automatic bandwidth control and other technologies that help deliver an uninterrupted meeting experience.

Because technology blips can be one of the biggest hurdles to adoption of this technology, LifeSize focuses on ensuring the user has the best experience on any network. If the user has a good experience with the technology, he or she is more likely to choose a video call over business travel.

In what ways do you see video conferencing technology evolving in the future?

CS. As videoconferencing becomes more prevalent within an enterprise as an intra-company collaboration tool, there will be a high demand for inter-company B2B visual collaboration arising from the need for enterprises to collaborate externally with their customers, suppliers and partners the same way they communicate with their peers within the enterprise. As the industry sees more advancements in technology, video endpoints will become cheaper, more feature-rich, more compatible and interoperable, and will have more value-added applications developed specifically for video collaboration.

The video collaboration industry will see a surge in high-end telepresence systems slowly replacing a majority of room-based systems in larger enterprises, while room-based systems will record a high growth in the small and medium sized enterprises. Also, desktop videoconferencing will see a huge growth trend, mainly due to increased enterprise-wide adoption, emergence of unified communications and the need to be connected at all times.    

AF. The migration of video conferencing from dedicated telepresence suites and dedicated in-room hardware through to the desktop is happening now. Technology is available to enable the seamless upgrade from instant messaging through voice call to video conferencing, mid-session, to deliver the richest collaboration experience possible based on hardware and user preferences. The emergence of mass consumer video conferencing in the mobile domain is now being heralded by the offerings of Fring and Apple with Facetime. We will see the convergence of consumer telepresence with IPTV at the home hub and the embedding of video communications into business applications, for instance, to enable point of sale interaction with customers, so called 'communications enabled business process'.

JL. To some extent already and even more in the very near future, video conferencing will be viewed as an integral part of the Unified Communications (UC) space and will be integrated with UC platforms such as Microsoft Office Communications Server, Active Directory, Exchange and the like. This adds presence awareness features and increased ease of booking meetings to video conferencing solutions. In addition to the trend of more and more companies subscribing to services instead of buying hardware, this UC trend will shape the industry.

Standards will continue to develop and we will see even greater resolutions and better frame rates in the future. No matter how video conferencing technology evolves, Videra will always be utilising the leading technologies from all leading vendors in the Virtual Office service concept and always bring the new opportunities to its customers.

JT. Video communications technology will continue to evolve delivering ever higher quality experiences without the need for massive investment in networks and infrastructure. As the technology becomes more advanced, it is important to keep a focus on the user and ensure that the system is simple to use with features such as one button calling and recording and simple layout controls.

Bringing down the cost and complexity of video will enable LifeSize, together with its parent company Logitech, to deliver on a vision of video for any business, anywhere - not just in the board room for a select few, but in any meeting room, office desktop, while telecommuting from home, and on the road. LifeSize will continue to deliver HD video systems that blend high-quality experience, superior flexibility, and lowest total cost of ownership.

Biography

Clive Sawkins brings a wealth of experience to BCS Global as CEO and Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing. Clive's previous position was at Cisco Communications, where he was responsible for the Unified Communications and Telepresence Video Collaboration business across Europe. Clive has also held senior positions at Avaya, where he was Vice President, and at Nortel Networks.

Anthony Finbow is CEO at Psytechnics Ltd, a leading provider of voice and video communications performance management solutions. Prior to joining Psytechnics he was Managing Director at MetaSolv Software Inc, which was acquired by Oracle. Previously he was CEO at Orchestream plc.

Janne Lauanne is a director at Videra responsible for video conferencing business globally. Lauanne has been working in the industry for 10 years and has transformed Videra's business from manufacturing and reselling video conference hardware to customer-oriented service business through the Virtual Office service concept. Lauanne has opened multiple international markets for Videra and seen the company grow exponentially.

Jonathan Tracey has over 20 years' experience in complex networking technologies. As Sales Engineering Director for EMEA, Jon is responsible for driving adoption of LifeSize technology in customer environments, and enabling users to get maximum benefits from their investments. Previously Jon worked for UUNET Technologies and also served in the British Army for 11 years.