Being There, While Staying Here

Transcription

1 TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS Being There, While Staying Here Along with enhancing productivity, video conferencing cuts travel costs, increases collaboration and boosts green initiatives. Prices are coming down. Product quality is on the rise. And new convenient, flexible and true-to-life solutions are finally becoming available. These are just a few of the reasons why video conferencing is flourishing at government agencies and educational institutions. Another important factor driving the acquisition of video conferencing solutions is that the technology helps bring a green approach to how organizations pursue their missions. Staying in the office for meetings helps organizations lower their energy costs, improve security and reduce travel expenses. And less travel offers a way to lower carbon emissions and reduce fuel consumption. Video conferencing has been one of the brightest spots in the technology marketplace. Sales and use have been growing rapidly over the past few years, according to Colin Buechler, senior vice president of marketing at high-definition (HD) video conferencing manufacturer LifeSize Communications. Video conferencing is currently a $2 billion a year industry, and most estimates expect that to double in the next few years. Not surprisingly, Erica Schroeder, director of market management at Cisco Systems, reports that Cisco s telepresence video conferencing products are the fastest-growing emerging technology in the manufacturer s history. It s a technology that makes it possible to save money, save the environment and create a better work and life balance for your staff. A win-win all around, video conferencing has been called the way of the future. Cutting Travel Costs The most obvious and often-cited benefit of video conferencing is the savings in travel time and expenses. This can prove especially enticing to organizations given today s economic environment. You avoid all the lost time of traveling, says Laura Shay, director of product marketing, video solutions, at Polycom. Sometimes you can spend eight hours traveling for a one-hour meeting. According to industry sources, many organizations recoup their investment in video conferencing equipment in a year or less just on the savings in travel costs. And there s also a soft time benefit, Shay adds. You get to go home at the end of the day. Organizations also appreciate the efficiency of video conferencing. Users find that it provides a better experience than audio-only or low-end video. For meetings normally done just over the phone, like a year-end review, video conferencing adds to the relationship, Shay says. Meetings can go faster when you can see participants because people are less likely to multitask for example, check or work on other projects. Using video conferencing can also accelerate decision cycles, LifeSize s Buechler adds. We find that development, creative and other cycles move faster because you don t have the time lost in transit, and because it s a more efficient medium. Along with speeding time to market, the technology can be used to dramatically increase [work] relationships, he adds. It provides that very important element of face time so critical to the working relationship. 1

2 Video Conference System Parts For a basic video conference, you will need the following components: Camera Display Audio device (phone) Teleconferencing appliance or software program (which includes the codec that handles encoding and decoding video and audio to the peripherals) IP network link or T1 line Take note that the camera, audio and possibly even display may be built into the appliance. Many organizations already have enough network bandwidth for effective video conferencing. However, depending on your plans, specific network upgrades may be needed. You want to provision at least 500 kilobits to 1 megabit per second for a video conferencing room and 2Mbps for high definition, says Polycom s Shay. It depends on the organization; some don t have that much bandwidth available. High-end telepresence setups may require 5 to 7Mbps for a call. However, we can provide that experience down to 1Mbps or even 768 kilobits per second, says LifeSize s Buechler. Our products are designed to offer good quality at lower speeds. Advances in the Technology Video conferencing is having a dramatic effect on the way organizations conduct their day-to-day work. Suddenly, being there offers a whole new meaning to weary road warriors, allowing them to work more frequently from their own offices. Much of this new dependence on video conferencing is a result of recent technological advances within the industry. These technology advancements include: HD video: This term refers to a video system offering higher resolution than standard definition. The same high-definition video offering sharp, detailed and wide-angle images on TV screens is now available for use in video conferencing. Better, larger displays: Today s video conferencing systems can feature display sizes ranging anywhere from a 20-inch desktop product to telepresence setups with two or even three 65-inch HD monitors, large enough for life-size images. Telepresence: This technology achieves its effect by being not only high definition, but also having people appear in real-life size. That s big enough to make eye contact, see facial expressions and read body language, notes Polycom s Shay. IP deployment: Today, video conferencing can run on the same IP-based LANs and wide-area connections used by your organization s voice and data traffic. Better pricing: As is the case with many technologies, video conferencing gear, and associated display and network products, continue to deliver more for the money. Prices are coming down while performance and features keep going up. For example, the starting price of HD cameras is now below $200. Varieties of Systems These days, video conferencing capabilities come in a wide range of sizes, prices and packages. Whatever your organization s needs and budget, there is a good fit for you. These options include: High-end telepresence suites Room-based video conference areas 2

3 Desktop, PC-based video conferencing Personal and mobile video conferencing Higher-up executives may want to conference in from their office desks, either in point-to-point conversations or tying into larger video conference sessions. For them, video conferencing software, peripherals and all-in-one desktop-class devices are available. These include the LifeSize Desktop Video and Polycom HDX 4000 Series. Video conference rooms are becoming increasingly popular with all sizes of organizations. For small and large conference rooms, codec appliances from Cisco, LifeSize, Polycom, Sony and other manufacturers can prove effective. Of course, you will need to combine them with the appropriate mix of cameras, audio and displays. You can outfit a video conferencing room for about $5,000 to $20,000 on average, says Polycom s Shay. Of course, it depends on how many screens and cameras you want, and how big the room is. About 85 percent of video conference usage models involve four people or less on a call, according to LifeSize s Buechler. About 5 percent have more than 10 participants but involve one-to-many streaming, he adds. For example, this could include [the organizational leadership] talking to teams. Systems to effectively connect more participants may require more cameras, displays and can cost more. Lifelike, across-the-table telepresence systems can start in the $60,000 range. The final price will depend on how many people you want to accommodate. Telepresence is an immersive, enhanced experience, Buechler says. Many [organizations] try to design the room around the video equipment. For example, they may use special lighting, audio equipment, furniture and even wall colors to create the experience. Manufacturers offering video conferencing products include Cisco, LifeSize, Polycom and Sony. Video Conferencing over IP Many video conferencing manufacturers offer gear that integrates easily with IP networks, so if the network s bandwidth is there, why not forge ahead and run your video conferences via IP, especially when IP telephony can cut voice line costs nearly in half. An organization should do three things if it wants to cut over its video conferencing to Voice over IP. First, estimate conferencing demands and the relative cost factors. Second, do adequate systems planning and prep work. Finally, make sure to get it right from the get-go or risk losing users. More than anything else, the question one should ask is what role is video going to play in the overall communications strategy, says David W. Butt, a veteran of IP video conferencing and manager of solutions initiatives for the unified communications unit at Cisco Systems. It s important to make all the pieces of an organization s telecommunication infrastructure fit, otherwise inefficiencies and workarounds will eat up the costs an organization saves by moving video conferencing to VoIP, Butt says. Bridges and Management Large, multilocation organizations making more than occasional use of video conferencing will also need several additional elements. For example, if you want to connect more people, sites and systems than the codec supports directly, you ll need an external bridge or multipoint controller unit (MCU). We offer a bridge that can show up to 16 sites on a screen at the same time, Polycom s Shay says. It can accommodate up to 160 video conferencing devices participating in a call and more by cascading bridges. In addition to one or more bridges, larger organizations may require a gatekeeper device such as Polycom s Converged Management Application (CMA). The gatekeeper is what IT uses to manage and control all video conferencing on the network. 3

4 For example, it controls who s allowed to be part of the conference, regulates bandwidth consumption (so video doesn t overwhelm other activity) and facilitates session startup. Lastly, some organizations may want a tool for content management, allowing them to record and archive video conferencing sessions. Getting Ready For Video Conferencing When preparing your organization for a video conferencing rollout, you will want to take the time to answer the following questions for a smooth integration: For what types of activities does your organization currently want to use video conferencing? Will this be an intraorganizational function or one used with the public, partners and consultants? What are your goals for using video conferencing? For example, do you want to reduce travel costs, save staff time, increase staff flexibility? Will your video conference feature staying-seated activities, or will participants at some sites be standing, walking, etc.? How many sites do you want to connect? Where are they? How many people per site? How many rooms per site do you want to connect? What s the number of people you expect per room and per session? How many rooms, sites or events do you expect to need to support at the same time? What, if any, current video conferencing equipment does your organization have? Does any of your IT staff have experience managing video conferencing equipment and activity? What s your organization s current Internet bandwidth to each site? Can you currently manage network traffic for Quality of Service (QoS), ensure critical applications are prioritized, reserve bandwidth for video conferencing, etc.? Do you have rooms available for use and/or conversion to dedicated video conferencing facilities? What s your budget for this project? It s All in the Planning As you might imagine, running video conferencing sessions over your network is not a simple plugand-play process. Video conferencing can have a noticeable effect on your network operations. So it s important that you prepare the network prior to a video conferencing rollout. Here are some tips to consider as you plan your initiative. Expand your bandwidth: Without room in your network pipes, your video conferencing solution is dead on arrival. Make sure you have plenty of bandwidth on your network, the backbone, and the connection to users desks and conference room systems so the video files will load and run without hiccups and latency. 4

5 Adjust the QoS settings: Tune your routers to ensure that they assign priority to video calls as needed. This can do a lot to ensure the overall quality of video conferences; otherwise you ll end up with dissatisfied users. Get professional help: Don t suffer bad video conferences on VoIP. Instead turn to experts either from inside your organization, at other organizations or in the industry. Talk to experienced users to learn about smart tricks they ve discovered or, if necessary, hire a consultant to handle the job of making sure everything works. Run it to the desktop: If the network can handle it, deliver video feeds directly to users systems. The current crop of 1GHz and faster computers can easily run software compressor/decompressors for VoIP video conferencing. Plus, many desktop systems now come with built-in video cameras, or you can add one on at low cost. Look at the big picture: You need to make sure that all your components fit a unified communications plan that serves your entire enterprise. Recent industry consolidations among makers of video conferencing gear also mean that there s more stability in products and services. CALL to talk to a specialist today