Digicom Technology News

A new business reality is emerging across all segments of the business spectrum, and it is creating opportunity and challenges that must be considered and planned for today. The new reality is the product of the convergence of mobility, video, and collaboration, driven by three megatrends:

• The consumerization of IT driven by the use of consumer-oriented devices and applications crossing over into the SMB and enterprise markets 
• The increased adoption and usage of videoconferencing across the consumer, SMB, and enterprise markets 
• Technology advances in the underlying foundation of mobile video driven by rapidly growing network broadband capacity and compounded by the growth of video-capable mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets

Mobility has reshaped voice telecommunications and is poised to have the same impact on video communications. The powerful combination of mobility and real-time video communications is further enhanced by the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend in mobility. BYOD is enabling devices and applications designed for consumer usage to impact the way employees of small, medium-sized, and large enterprises access and utilize advanced communication applications, essentially extending the most widely used consumer devices and applications into the enterprise.

In the BYOD scenario, employees want to increase their own productivity; they need no incentive and, in fact, must overcome organizational barriers. Furthermore, they require no training because they have learned how to use these applications at home, and they furnish their own technology in the form of cherished smartphones or tablets. This trend of consumerization brings to bear a number of new concerns about liability, privacy, and security. As a result, enterprise IT stakeholders are rapidly building a strategy for BYOD through the implementation of mobile management and security.

Similar to the rapid movement toward person-to-person communication rather than place-to-place communication, a shift from voice communication to visual communication is occurring as well. The increasing usage of various forms of videoconferencing in the consumer, SMB, and enterprise markets is quickly establishing itself all over the globe. For example, IDC forecasts that approximately 30% of the U.S. population will engage in videoconferencing in 2012, growing to over 45% by 2015.Also, according to IDC's recent enterprise survey, 40.5% of respondents currently use some form of videoconferencing and 70% of respondents either currently use videoconferencing or plan to use videoconferencing in the next year.

The foundation for mobile video collaboration lies in two trends. Firstly, The growth of tablet and smartphone penetration. Secondly, the buildout of 3G and 4G mobile networks and the growing access to WiFi connected to fixed broadband networks in the home, the workplace, and public areas.

In addition to deploying unified communications (UC) technology for enhancing interactions between and among workers for productivity purposes, organizations are now leveraging the technology to enhance key business processes. For example, they are using video not just for face-to-face internal meetings but also for conducting diagnostic procedures in healthcare, distance learning in education, online access to experts in banking and finance, video kiosks in retail operations, and business-to-business commerce among customers, clients, and partners.

When potential users evaluate the benefits of mobile visual communications, the key question is, "Will it make me and my team more productive?" In IDC surveys of thousands of SMB owners and enterprise IT decision makers, "increased productivity" is continually listed among the highest benefits of video collaboration. Increased productivity means video gives the sales team, product team, research team, or engineering team an edge.

Please contact Digicom to see how our video conferencing solutions can help you.

Article courtesy of IDC.

Apple made a little product announcement earlier this month. Something about a new iPad. It got mixed reviews: Some people expected more significant changes to the wildly popular tablet.

But AV professionals monitoring the iPad announcement need hear only three things about the new product: 4G, HD, and quad-core. Taken together, those iPad features describe an instantly viable, high-definition videoconferencing endpoint — one that’s likely to sell tens of millions of units and push an entire generation toward mobile videoconferencing, with all the technology design, systems engineering, and planning changes that entails.

Certainly, the new Apple iPad isn’t the first mobile computing device to support videoconferencing (or video calling, if you will) — high definition or otherwise. You’ll recall Tangberg’s Movi client (now incorporated into a platform Cisco Systems is calling Jabber), or even Cisco’s own Cius tablet, designed to support 720p videoconferencing. And vendors such as LifeSize (ClearSea), Polycom (RealPresence Mobile), Radvision (ScopiaMobile), and Vidyo (VidyoMobile) have made great strides in enabling high-quality videoconferencing on today’s mobile devices, limited as some of those devices might be in their ability to handle video. But when you consider that the iPad now has the processing power to crank through H.264 and other streams, a screen and camera that support 720p and 1080p, a wireless network connection (two, if you count Wi-Fi) that offers the necessary bandwidth for HD video links, and that it’s already backordered, it’s definitely time for AV pros, their clients, and their IT counterparts to start building systems that support pervasive video conferencing. Because it’s one thing to Skype from a smartphone; it’s another  to patch into a telepresence room from a new iPad or similarly powered mobile device while sitting in an airport lounge.

“A lot of people are still unaware that you can do mobile videoconferencing,” says Matt McNeil, CTS-D®, chief marketing officer at Conference Technologies. “They think you’ll get the quality of Skype rather than what they’re used to with their room videoconferencing systems. Others are surprised at how good the mobile technology has gotten in the last year.”

The age of mobile videoconferencing is officially upon us, thanks in no small part to the iPad. And it will rely on the convergence of AV and IT like no other technology before it. Why? Because AV professionals still own the videoconferencing room experience, but IT will always have responsibility over the computing devices — mobile and otherwise — that workers use.

According to a recent survey of videoconferencing users by Wainhouse Research, 36 percent of respondents said their organizations had already deployed videoconferencing-enabled tablets; 16 percent were actually engaging in mobile videoconferencing; and half said their organization planned to test or deploy it within the year.

“This is the whole new paradigm that everyone’s talked about,” says John Vitale, Vice President of Products at AVI-SPL. “Within the last year, mass adoption of new devices has started driving mobile videoconferencing.”

If you would like to to know more about video conferencing, please contact Digicom.

Article from infoComm.

Be more productive from anywhere on any device with Cisco Jabber, a new unified communications application. Cisco Jabber lets you access presence, instant messaging (IM), voice, video, voice messaging, desktop sharing, and conferencing. Find the right people, see if and how they are available, and collaborate using your preferred method. Cisco Jabber extends Cisco's unified communications and collaboration solutions across PC, Mac, tablet and smartphone. Jabber is available today for Windows, iPhone, iPad, Nokia, Android and BlackBerry platforms. In addition, Jabber integrates with video endpoints including Cisco Unified IP Phones, Cisco WebEx® Meeting Center, Cisco TelePresence.


Features:

Interoperability:

• Cisco Jabber uses the industry-standard Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for presence and IM. With Jabber's interoperability, employees from one company can interact with employees at other companies using applications from Google, IBM. Microsoft and AOL.
•  Further increasing user acceptance and adoption, Cisco Jabber provides integration with Microsoft Office productivity applications so users can see a colleague's availability status, and quickly escalate communications to an instant message, phone call or conference from within the application.

Today, Apple iPads are being incorporated into many business environments to increase productivity and Extron are now adding value to their control systems through this medium. MediaLink for iPad is an AV control system app designed for the Apple iPad. It provides users with an additional point of control for rooms with an installed Ethernet-enabled MediaLink controller, such as the MLC 104 IP Plus or the MLC 226 IP. Presenters can wirelessly control the AV system using a Wi-Fi network, allowing them the freedom to move throughout the room. You can find MediaLink for iPad now in the Apple App Store. It is easy to set up and only 79c once you have an Extron Medialink Controller in your meeting rooms.

Key features are as follows:

Provides an additional point of control for Ethernet-enabled MediaLink controllers

Supports MLC 104 IP Plus and MLC 226 IP MediaLink controllers that are configured using Global Configurator

Connection manager allows presenters to control different rooms

Button tracking allows iPad and controller to stay in sync

Provides real-time status and remote control of multiple rooms for troubleshooting and management

Wireless control using a Wi-Fi network allows users to move freely throughout the room

Familiar user interface looks just like the MediaLink controller on the wall

Please contact Digicom for any AV control system requirements you may have.

Pacific Media Associates(PMA)are a high-tech market research firm that specializes in the Projector market. From Pico Projectors to Mainstream Projectors for business and education to Home Theater Projectors to Digital Cinema Projectors. They have released their latest quarterly projector industry forecast updates with some of the highlights outlined below.

PMA divides the front projector industry into three brightness ranges, each associated with its own set of buyer types and applications: New Era (sub-500 lumens), Mainstream (500-4999 lumens), and High End (5000+ lumens).

In the New Era range (pico, personal and toy/game projectors), use of LED light engines is expected to grow by 40% this year and next. In the Mainstream range, use of laser and LED illumination is expected to increase in unit sales by more than 50% in 2012. Shipments of laser/LED hybrid models are forecast to grow modestly this year, and then are expected to grow by more than 40% each year during 2013-2015. Shipments of laser-illuminated units are expected to begin in 2013 for the High-End and d-Cinema ranges. In 2014, PMA anticipates a growth rate of more than 80% for the High-End laser models and nearly double for the Digital Cinema laser models.

PMA’s quarterly forecast also identifies the anticipated growth of relatively inexpensive, medium-throw projectors (i.e., ones with a throw ratio¬ of lens-to-screen distance divided by the screen width ¬of 0.38 to <0.75).

 “While outlook for ultra-short-throw projectors - i.e., ones with a throw ratio less than 0.38 - is still very promising,” said Michael Abramson, PMA’s VP of Projector Research, “there are a lot more medium-throw projectors coming to market that allow big-screen viewing from up-close distances — in the office, in the classroom, and even in the home — all at budget-friendly prices”.

Unit shipments of medium-throw projectors are expected to increase by nearly 20% each year during 2012-2014, while the average street price for these projectors predicted to drop by more than 50% by 2016.
The PMA forecast also anticipates a different shift in resolution mix for each of the three brightness ranges in the coming years. For New Era projectors, 720p units are expected to start shipping in 2012, with 1080p units expected to ship in 2013. For the Mainstream range, 2012 shipments of WUXGA (1920×1200 pixels) and Above-WUXGA are anticipated to grow by more than 30% and by more than 70% from 2011, respectively. PMA also forecasts solid growth in 2K and 4K resolutions for the High-End range (non- Digital Cinema).

If you would like to get more information on a projector that would suit you needs please contact Digicom on 01 4600022 or email info@digicom.ie