For Video Conferencing the Future May Be Now
By Sarah Schmelling
It may be the 21st Century, but video on your desktop and the general idea of videoconferencing can still often seem like the far-fetched futurist inventions of the cartoon “The Jetsons.”
Though video technology has been touted and expected to be “the next big thing” for close to a decade now, its progress has been stymied by technological limitations, a weak economy and the slow adoption patterns that go hand-in-hand with financial concerns.
But now, though some analysts may be hesitant to say it, the future is starting to look bright once more for videoconferencing and desktop video technologies. Several videoconferencing manufacturers and providers have recently announced new products and services.
The videoconferencing market is growing at about 27 percent per year, and is predicted to go from $530 million in sales in 2003 to $1.1 billion in 2008, Massachusetts-based analyst firm Wainhouse Research reported in June.
Marc Beattie, conferencing service provider practice manager and partner of Wainhouse, says these improvements have occurred for two reasons. First, the companies that held back on spending and providing new technologies during the recession are now making up for lost time. “So where things slowed down we’re kind of back-filling,” he says.
“The second part is that during the recession, organizations shed a good number of people—specifically in the Global 1000. But the small-to-medium enterprises as well had to tighten their belts,” he explains. Because of this, less people were doing more work, and video became a helpful technology by which to communicate globally. “They were saying, how can we stretch this person a little more?,” he adds.
In short, companies have been looking to cut costs any way they can, and video increases utilization of limited resources.
Beattie points out, however, that it’s important to differentiate between the two kinds of video technology in the corporate world. There is videoconferencing, where a group of people goes into a conference room and sits down in front of a videoconferencing system—much like a group audio conference.
The other type is desktop video, which usually involves three or four endpoints, versus one endpoint in a videoconference.
Beattie says, “There’s use for video in this environment, but the focus at your desktop…is more on data than anything else.” It’s a perk, he explains, to see a person on video on your PC, but it’s not as necessary as in a videoconference.
At the moment, technology for desktop video is still developing. Beattie says that for most companies trying it right now, using video during Web conferences can be tricky.
“I’ve been involved in Web conferences before where they wanted video of me because I was the featured speaker, but they wanted their audio bridge, and there was no synch between the audio and the video. The sound was completely off.”
What will change this kind of situation, many analysts believe, is the growing stability of Voice-over-Internet-protocol, or VoIP. This technology, which, as its name implies, packetizes voice for utilization over an Internet connection, has also been touted for years as a great solution—but is just coming to the foreground.
In September, research group IDC predicted that IP voice services among U.S. businesses would reach nearly $60 million by the end of 2004, with a compound rate of 282 percent to reach $7.8 billion in 2008.
Once we see more organizations adding VoIP, Beattie says, it might become more natural to show a speaker on desktop video, and then make that picture smaller as documents are incorporated within the conference.
He believes this kind of usage is about two years away. Until then, we can enjoy using less complicated Web conferencing, and hope that this next big thing really is, this time, just around the corner.
Sarah Schmelling is a contributor to ConferencingNews. Based in Los Angeles, Sarah has reported and written for leading telecommunications and technology publications. She may be reached at journalists@betuitive.com.
