Digicom Technology News

Over the past few years, personal video conferencing has promised to enter the enterprise mainstream, with laptops, tablets, and phones operating on upgraded networks capable of supporting real-time audio and video communications. Many corporations are looking to embrace personal video conferencing as both a stand-alone application and as part of an overall Unified Communications (UC) deployment because rich media communications can speed decision making, help build stronger teams, and ultimately drive top line revenues as part of a sales strategy. Avaya recently commissioned a study with the aim of establishing the requirements for successfully deploying pervasive personal video. Below is a brief discussion and results from the study.

Many of today's crop of personal video conferencing systems have overcome the limitations of the past – ease of use, video quality, bandwidth management, and reliability. And while many enterprise managers may have the perception that wide-scale deployment of personal video would be possible only as part of a UC platform rollout, it is actually very achievable and affordable using traditional MCUbased video conferencing. An added benefit to MCU-based video is its extensive feature set and room systems compatibility which contrasts with many UC-based solutions. Rolling out a personal video conferencing service to managers and information workers has significant benefits beyond travel savings – including improved team building, better integration of resources, and faster decision making while allowing for a richer interaction. A factor that is often overlooked is the need to deploy to a critical mass of users. Scale is essential to making video calling an everyday experience. Configuring the network to support personal video conferencing and the required bandwidth is an important step, but not one that is particularly onerous with today's technology and services.

The follow are the results of the study:

• Enterprises should evaluate the new generation of personal video conferencing solutions as a vehicle to increase sales, strengthen partnerships, and improve internal team building. The current crop of personal video collaboration solutions are enterprise-ready and overcome the scalability, reliability, and quality issues that plagued desktop video conferencing years ago. 
• Avoid creating islands of communication. Integrate room systems with personal and mobile video conferencing solutions, bringing added value to both sets of investments. Integrated deployments should support high quality audio and video and easy connections inside and outside the firewall.
• Create a small, end-user driven team of product champions with participation from at least one high level executive. Have IT represented on the team, but do not have only IT department members. Include the network specialists and line-of-business users.
• Communicate internally to all involved with information on what will happen and when so that colleagues can monitor the progress of the deployment project. Include training sessions and provide documentation on how to use the new solution effectively.
• Communicate after the deployment about how the solution is being used and what benefits workers are seeing. This will encourage others to use video, making the solution more valuable to all.