The world is increasingly becoming a global village and conferencing solu­tions are playing a big part in this transformation by eradicating the geographical boundaries. In all fields, there is a growing need for conferencing solutions and hence the demand for it is steadily on the rise. The recent hike in fuel prices has further given an impetus to this demand, with companies curtai­ling their travel costs. Also, online collaboration is increa­singly seeing takers across the verticals like health and medicine and government. With this, the rate of adoption of videoconferencing within the country is set to increase.

Business conferences and decision-making options depend on the availability of information at the right time. In order to save time, business meetings are increasingly being conducted over telecommunication net­works with the help of video­conferencing, telepresence and web-conferencing.

This also provides an opportunity for solution pro­viders (SPs) to up-sell their business and cash in on the growing demand.

Growth drivers
A Frost and Sullivan survey expects the videoconferencing market to grow at a CAGR of 24.9 percent till 2011. As the awareness about conferen­cing solutions is increasing in India more and more people across sectors are opting for it. According to K Shivashankar, Country Manager, LifeSize Communications India, the demand for videoconferencing solutions is coming from across the board, across sections, SMBs and corporate. “While the benefits can be experienced by all, SMBs get the immediate benefits. For a small company, the savings on trips have a huge impact,” added Shivashankar.

A school may bank on videoconferencing as an effec­tive tool to be used in distance education or to help its students interact with other students around the world from their classrooms. A hospital may use the solution to immediately pull up information about a patient in another continent, or to share crucial information with a hospital in a rural area.

Apart from offering cost benefits, conferencing solutions also help organizations maxi­mize their business efficiency with fewer resources, eliminating physical distance between customers, suppliers and tra­veling staff, and help speed up decision-making processes, scaling knowledge and encoura­ging work balance.

Web-conferencing is also witnessing increased growth as enterprises are realizing its added benefits like being on hosted services. Rather than investing in a product and enterprises, individuals can do a web-conference as and when the need arises, with no investment. This is accelerating the adoption of web-conferencing. The high-tech industry, BFSI, and consulting are few key verticals that see increasing usage of web-conferencing in India.

The offerings
While videoconferencing is witnessing an increase in adoption, it does have its share of challenges. It is one thing to have a face-to-face interaction, and quite another to com­pensate that with a real-life image of a person on a screen. Videocon­ferences have been difficult to set up, challenging to use, and frequently unsatisfying in their ability to replicate in-person meetings. But companies in this field are working on ways to improve this situation.

The latest innovation in this technology has been the introduction of telepresence solutions. With this solution, one can experience life-size remote participants, fluid motion, accurate flesh tones, studio quality acoustics and lighting, true-life pictures with a true eye-contact or an approximation of it, and immersive environ­ments that establish collective experience among disparate locations.

Polycom has recently intro­duced the Real Presence HD solution, designed to further eliminate barriers of a geogra­phically dispersed workforce by providing a unique, cost-effective, engrossing and intera­ctive telepresence meeting experience. This solution seamlessly connects a virtually limitless number of sites, and people in other Polycom RPX suites, standards-based video­con­­ference rooms, and video-enabled IP telephony and presence-based desktop systems. According to Polycom, India is a ripe market for a space that is worth around $3 billion worldwide.

Another development is on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) platform, expected to be the protocol of future videoconferencing.

LifeSize is another vendor in this space offering telepresence solutions-LifeSize Conference. LifeSize Conference is powered by a high-definition video communication architecture that delivers the immersive quality and performance of telepresence with lesser need for costly room customization, and can be deployed beyond the boardroom to work groups and teams. According to Shivashankar, setting up a videoconference is no longer a challenge. “Our videoconferencing solution is an out-of-the-box solution that is very easy to deploy and use,” he shared.

Sony has recently introduced PCS-XG80, a high-definition videoconferencing solution. Its advantage is that it integrates the IP camera with the videocon­ference. Speaking about its range of products, Ambareesh Dixit, Marketing Head-Business Communication Products, Broadcast and Professional Products Division, Sony India said, “We have top-of-the-line high-definition products that work on IP and ISDN, and are full-fledged comprehensive solutions.” He added that Sony found the most demand coming from government, education, healthcare and telemedicine.

Many companies are adopting video conferencing to reduce travel and to make more efficient use of employees' time. Cisco Systems recently intro­duced two video-conferencing systems-one for use in individual offices and the other for group training and team meetings. The System 500 and System 3200 support high-definition video.

Speaking about their offerings, Minhaj Zia, National Sales Manager-Unified Communications, Cisco India and SAARC said, “Videoconferencing is moving beyond corporate to the government sector, judiciary, distance learning, entertainment and telemedicine. The real impact of videoconferencing technology can only be realized when the user's experience is close to natural face-to-face meeting, and telepresence in this respect has already started revolutionizing room-based videoconferencing services.”

Cisco's TelePresence appli­cation delivers real-time, face-to-face interactions between people and places in their work and personal lives, using advanced visual, audio, and collaboration technologies. In some cases, these products use a room-within-a-room environment along with life-size images, and high-definition resolution with spatial and discrete audio to create a live, face-to-face meeting around a single 'virtual' table.

The SP advantage
So how can SPs benefit by offering conferencing solutions? According to vendors in this space, for an SP, offering conferencing solutions will give them a value add to offer their customers. Explaining the way the nature of IT buying has changed in most companies, Shivashankar said that four to five years back, a purchase decision regarding something like videoconferencing solutions was with the facilities depart­ment of an office. But today, it depends on the IT manager. Here is where more involvement from IT resellers would be required as he would understand the IT manager better and would be in sync with him.

“Today if an IT reseller adds videoconferencing solutions to their portfolio, it completes their portfolio, and counts as a value add,” shared Shivashankar. Adding to that Dixit explained, “Selling videoconferencing solutions would help SPs sell multiple products to their clients, ie monitors, projectors and other products required in videocon­ferencing. It will also help
them grow their topline and bottomline.”

Actis Technologies offers audio and videoconferencing solutions from Sony, LifeSize and Tandberg. Speaking about how adding conferencing solutions to their portfolio has helped them, Abhimanyu Gupta, Director, Actis Technologies said, “The addition of these solutions to our portfolio has helped us generate additional revenue, especially in the last two years.” He added that it acts as a catalyst in selling other products (plasma, projector, echo cancellation, etc) while giving the complete video conferencing solution.

Staying competitive
To maintain a competitive edge, businesses are constantly seeking ways to improve enterprise communications and boost employee productivity. Conduc­ting a meeting via conference
call and videoconference is a standard practice today, but these modes of communication lack the actual experience of an in-person meeting. At the same time, business travel costs continue to increase, and employees lose countless hours of productivity getting to and from meetings across towns or the country. As voice, video and data applications converge, enterprises must change their traditional business models for interpersonal com­munications, and empower teams with innovative tools to instantly connect to co-workers, partners and customers on a global scale.

The inherent benefits of videoconferencing have often been offset by a number of operational issues. India has also faced bandwidth and special networking requirements that has lead people to perceive that videoconferencing integration with the enterprise's overall communication network is limited and makes it an overlay application that require special attention and administration.

But recent advancements in the collaborative communi­cations tools are ushering in a new era of video telephony, facilitating easy usage and adhoc access of video conferen­cing. The migration to converged IP networks and the spread of IP telephony has also provided a receptive platform infrastruc­ture that can enable video to become an integrated element within the communications environ­ment of every organi­zation.

Goal setting
Despite its inherent technolo­gical and cost advantages, videoconferencing over conver­ged network faces certain challenges that impede its growth. In India, there is a lack of education and awareness about the business benefits of conferencing solutions.

Factors like cost of ownership, maintenance of infrastructure, and the general perception about videocon­ferencing as an item of luxury could possibly affect the growth of this market. At present, most enterprises connect via ISDN.

Agreeing that bandwidth is a challenge and make people drag their feet in terms of adoption, Shivashankar said, “Currently the broadband speed is more suitable for Internet browsing, and hence considered cheap. But in the video world, it is not the same. The cost goes up.” He added that as the need for videoconferencing increases, SPs will also rationalize on the cost front.

However, Internet-based connections are increasing in popularity and many public rooms have come up in India, which allow these conferencing over IP network. Bandwidth issues at the backend need to be addressed to ensure that full benefits of videoconferencing can be availed.

While education at the end-user level is vital, it is also important to ensure that the channel are trained on a periodic basis about latest products and their features. Hence, vendors like Sony and LifeSize undertake regular training for partners.

Speaking about the goals for LifeSize in India, Shivashankar said, “We would like to see ourselves among the top three players in this space in India. Our goal is to make high-definition videoconferencing solutions as pervasive as possible, hence our solutions are available at a starting price of Rs 2.7 lakh. We are striving towards achieving this goal with our leadership in price performance.”

DQC News Bureau

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