Can videoconferencing really live up to the hype? 
David Stanton
04/07/2010

Video conferencing has long held the reputation of over-promising and under delivering. For decades it was promoted as a panacea for business efficiency and increased productivity through reduced travel time and costs. The reality, however, was that video conferencing became synonymous with slow speeds, poor quality, jerky pictures, difficulty to use and high costs to operate. In other words, it never really lived up to the hype.

As time has moved on and last year’s recession tightened its grip, particularly with recent clouds of volcanic ash prohibiting air travel in the last few weeks, we see that a universal desire among businesses to cut costs, and improving productivity and business efficiency is fast moving up the boardroom agenda.

As video conferencing has increasingly come back into focus as a potential answer to these issues, just what has changed to allow for wide scale adoption of video conferencing as a mainstream business activity?

Technology drivers
Improvements in technology, and in particular, the benefit offered by next-generation networks, has allowed video conferencing to deliver on some of the unfulfilled promises of yesteryear. Technology is now more agile and the ability to prioritise bandwidth has allowed video to run well in real-time, delivering much improved user experience. The resultant clarity of picture has led to users commenting that they actually feel as if they are in the same room as the other person. For the first time, the technology IS living up to the hype.

The recent economic downturn has seen many business travel budgets slashed, which in turn has become a springboard for companies looking to managed video conferencing solutions as a real alternative to travel. Of this, we observe that telepresence solutions have been one of the gainers. A recent report by telecoms analyst house Ovum, has predicted that adoption of managed telepresence services will soar in the next five years, with businesses investing around $1.7 billion on video conferencing between 2010 and 2014.
Revenues for ready-built telepresence suites in Asia-Pacific grew an estimated 71.1 per cent in 2009 (up from 46.6 per cent in 2008), and for 2010, a growth of 64.4 per cent is expected, with revenues of just over US$73.0 million by year-end, according to analyst house Frost & Sullivan.

Replicating the real experience of face to face – a culture shock?
Many organisations face a cultural stumbling block when trying to deploy video conferencing solutions that, in the past, have been exacerbated by a poor user experience. With disconnected faces and voices, some legacy video conferencing tools failed to replicate the experience of a face-to-face meeting, making them an unsuitable replacement.

The high quality of video conferencing technology now makes it feel like you’re actually meeting a person. People appear life-size on-screen and the meeting can take place in stereo surround sound. These meeting suites enable those taking part to make real eye contact and observe other non-verbal signals such as body language or facial expressions that are so vital to a productive meeting.

Users are also able to share desktop content between locations facilitating effective collaboration. Of course, certain types of meetings, such as an initial customer meeting or a client pitch, will always require a physical element, however, for most other business meetings, managed videoconferencing is a very compelling alternative, making a very visible difference to business performance.

Going green – costs and carbon emissions
During the recession, businesses were keen to make cost-savings wherever possible, and business travel was an obvious area of opportunity. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s recent Austere Traveler survey showed 46 per cent of businesses are choosing to respond to the downturn by completely cutting business travel for internal meetings. Leading businesses are also deploying video conferencing to communicate with suppliers, partners and even customers.

Additionally, companies are now coming under increasing pressure to recognise, and act upon their social and environmental responsibilities. Reducing carbon emissions is a positive step in the wider battle against climate change and a significant decrease in business travel enables companies to better align themselves with corporate responsibility. Our research shows that a medium sized enterprise with annual travel budgets of ₤20 million, can expect to make savings of some 30 per cent in costs and carbon emissions.

We are living in a post-recession world, where cost-efficiency and productivity sit at the top of the corporate agenda, alongside the need to improve green credentials. Managed video conferencing is a valuable tool in the armour to allow businesses to achieve these aims, as long as people are ready to make that cultural shift to using managed video conference services as an everyday instrument of communication.

- David Stanton is Vice President, Enterprise Sales, Asia Pacific, Cable&Wireless Worldwide.

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