Every second person today is talking about video conferencing, it could be = a dedicated room Telepresence kind of setup or a small movable unit or webc= ams installed on the workstations or even making video calls from your smar= tphones. All these are forms of Video Conferencing, but all of the sudden w= hat made the entire world fall for Video Conference ?
When recession striked the whole world in 2008, Every company was looking f= orward to cut down its operating expenditures and travelling was a major ex= penditure for all the companies... so, companies decided to switch to optio= ns like Video Conferences, Conference Bridges, etc... and as the time passe= d though the world had almost recovered from the economical crisis but Vide= o Conferecing had made itself an important part of every AV & office automa= tion project. lets have a look at the key factors which make VC a critical = component in day to day life today -=20
- Cost Saving=20
Companies which swicthed to VC are able to save millions of dollars just by= bringing down their travelling expenditures. While discussing a VC require= ment with one of my customer, I came to know that they were never worried a= bout the air tickets and hotel expenses, the only thing which bothered them= was Dual Presence - lemme explain, whenever they have someone travelling t= hey consider every day spent out of city as two days (May be day & night.. = dunno exactly) and if travelled on office holiday, it would be four times (= I know you must be thinking - what a lovely company it is). So, on every 10= days official trip any employee was able to earn his one month salary as e= xtra. Honestly that is toooo much travelling expense.
- Business Agility
Yes... Agility
Without VC anybody who wish to have a meeting face to face, will either hav= e to wait for another person to come or will have to travel all the way to = his office. So, Video Conferencing provides you with an option for instant = face to face communication. So, with a Video Conferencing setup you can hav= e a face to face meeting within minutes. Isn't it Agile ?
- Mobility
With 3G & 4G high speed internet bandwidth rolling in via your cellphones y= ou can be a part of any main stream multiparty video conferencing from your= laptops, Notebooks, Tabs or even your smartphones. (This sometimes feel li= ke killing... no place to hide ;-) )
Who are the leaders in this Arena ?
Well, when we talk about VC leaders. we would need to divide it into two ca= tegories -=20
- Hardware Based
- Software based (Though it too requires endpoint hardware )
Leaders in hardware based VC -=20
- Cisco - Cisco was already a leader with its product called Telepresence = but after acquiring Tandberg and seamless integration between its software = and other hardware, it had become a clear leader in the league.
- Polycom - Polycom undoubtedly is the biggest competitor to Cisco in this= arena and probably has a bigger installbase than Cisco but because of the = complete end to end product range for VoIP & IP telephony, VC & saftware ba= sed integration, Cisco would remain the winner
There are few more niche players fighting among themselves to establish the= mselve in the league
Leaders in Software based VC - =20
- Webex - Webex is a product from the house of Cisco and a early entrant i= nto this arena. Webex comes with phenomenal quality, a trusted brand name a= nd worldclass technical support from Cisco
- Peoplelink - Peoplelink is another vendor this arena with a good piece = software, good licensing model and fully functional multi-party conference = (This feature works better than Webex) but never tried their technical supp= ort. So, cant comment on it.
And alst but not the least we should not miss
Lifesize - Well, I dont know much about this product and havent even seen t= his working anywhere so far but this product had created enough buzzword ab= out its HD video conferencing capablities at a very low bandwidth requireme= nt @ 768KBPS - Isnt that amazing ??=20
And if that is true, what the hell is happening at Cisco's Telepresence R&D= centers ??
Wish to know how products work on hosted models - These posts might help -= =20 Cloud Computing - Is it still a buzzword ?? What is Cloud Computing ? Top Pitfalls to Avoid when Implementing Cloud Computing You might also like -=20 Magic of Multicast - The game behind the IPTV - Explained