Video for all: enabling the new era of ‘mass’ multimedia collaboration

By Nigel Moulton, Director, Product and Solutions Marketing

Video communication in business – often perceived to be expensive, difficult to use and bandwidth hungry – was traditionally the preserve of the board room. But with HD video services now becoming much more widely available, organisations need to consider if they have the right strategy in place to achieve maximum benefit.

Without the use of video communications, it's just possible that we might still be waiting for the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy to be completed. It's a little known fact, but director Peter Jackson used video conferencing to enable concurrent filming in multiple locations[1]. Footage from the cameras was transmitted over high-bandwidth networks to editing studios or to other filming locations, which significantly shortened the time to make the films.

However, whilst this example is a great illustration of how video can be used to enhance collaboration, create new efficiencies and dramatically shorten 'cycle times', it also reinforces the 'old' perception that video is reserved only for the high-fliers with big budgets.

Thankfully, with the emergence of more widely available low-bandwidth HD video services for enterprises, this is no longer the case. The growth of deployed business video units has been phenomenal over the last five years, increasing at an annual growth rate of 14%[2]. Every quarter, another 50,000 additional video units are rolled out[3]. And video market growth has continued during both economic upswings and downturns: not only because video delivers cost saving tools, but also a major boost to efficiency and collaboration:

• More effective communication, faster decision-making

Video communication enables businesses to work more effectively through face-to-face interaction.

Results from IDC's eVideo survey show that more than three-quarters (76.1%) of respondents cited cost savings/avoidance (e.g., saving on travel costs for meetings, in-person training, and so forth) as a key business driver for the use of enterprise video. In addition, 63.7% of respondents cited that improving team collaboration (e.g., across geographies or time zones) is the key driver for use of enterprise video. This point was especially important for Line of Business respondents.⁴

• Improved cross-border working

The global business com­munity is growing rapidly. Video facilitates multi-cultural decision-making by ensuring visual cues, such as facial expressions and gestures, are part of a virtual in-person meeting or customer interaction. These are cues that would be totally lost in a voice or text only conversation or meeting.

• Better relationship-building for remote workers

Along with building better understanding, video allows distributed individuals and teams to forge stronger relationships due to the face-to-face interaction. For example, managers will often have more success managing remote employees when video conversations are employed as appropriate.

• Reduced travel costs, lower carbon emissions

Cutting the cost of travel is the most commonly cited business case for video, mainly because real cost savings can be calculated. Video also has the ability to reduce certain greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the amount of car, plane, train, and other types of travel. For companies with green initiatives, video conferencing is a way to significantly improve and promote green operations.

Overall, the value of video is being proven day in and day out, helping businesses to build trust and understanding between colleagues, as well as with suppliers and partners. And this is the reason that many enterprises are now extending video beyond the meeting room, across the organisation, and into customer service applications.

Maximising your opportunity

So how do organisations deal with this massive influx of new video capabilities? Unfortunately video has traditionally been deployed in 'silos' -with the result that communications and collaboration capabilities often became disjointed, uncoordinated and inherently inefficient.

There are significant signs, however, that attitudes are changing for the better. Most enterprises today recognise the need to integrate video with the rest of the enterprise communications fabric. And happily, this change of thinking is coinciding with the widespread growth of Unified Communications deployments.

Prior to this development, the end user experience was usually awkward because people were required to decide in advance which communications modality they wished to use (voice, email, IM, web, video) and to manually set up communications channels -:independently and for each. Typically, those channels could not be changed or augmented while the meeting was in progress.

Contrast that solution to a Unified Communication's paradigm, in which users may choose to start with any communications modality they wish, and then add any and all other modalities as needed, seamlessly. These kinds of capabilities can be integrated into nearly any business process or situation where human interaction or intervention is required. A well-designed and implemented Unified Communications system also significantly reduces multiple communications mechanisms in favour of more rapid, ad hoc, one-on-one and group meetings. These systems integrate real-time media with collaborative services - and in fact any device a person chooses to use within the context of a workflow application.

Summary

The ultimate goal should be to create an integrated Unified Communications infrastructure that includes all of the communications capabilities people need, while providing them in an easy to use and consistent way. To obtain the greatest benefit from these individual components, enterprises are moving toward Unified Communications environments in which phones can call video units; IM sessions can escalate to voice, video, and data conferences; and users can seamlessly and effortlessly utilise any communications mechanism available to them. And the key lies in developing a well-conceived communications strategy that removes silos by unifying video with those other ad hoc, multimodal communications mechanisms in the enterprise.

[1] Wainhouse Research, Bringing Unified Communications to Life with Seamless Video Interoperability, September 2010

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

4Video in the Enterprise Proliferates: An Updated Snapshot of Current and Planned Adoption, IDC #219871, Sep 2009