The Collaboration Revolution

By Harold German

Successful Meetings Magazine

10/01/04

Collaborating in today's fast-paced, ever-connected world demands a level of communication that incurs hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel costs and hundreds of hours in productivity every year. Incorporating virtual conferencing technologies into the mix can be a valuable strategy for reducing these costs.

Over the course of three years, Wainhouse Research, an independent market research firm covering the rich- media conferencing and communications fields, conducted a detailed study into the incorporation of video and Web technologies into the meetings environment. The data reveals that 31 percent of workers have participated in either a Web- or video- conference.

Here are several trends that have spurred the growth in electronic meetings.

Increased Reliability

Most companies using videoconferencing conduct their meetings over ISDN lines (Integrated Services Digital Network). Although it has always been the most affordable medium for video communication, ISDN is plagued by performance, reliability, and image-quality issues. For years, the typical conferencing user has had to deal with the dreaded "dropped call." Imagine being in the middle of an important board meeting with senior-level, international attendees and the call abruptly ends due to a service interruption. For this reason, large corporations accepted the initially higher costs of IP Networks (Internet Protocol), and enjoyed relatively uninterrupted service.

For the last few years, however, there has been a significant migration of even small and mid-sized companies to these IP networks, a medium that is much more robust and has recently become more affordable. The image quality of the video calls is superior, the entry price point is significantly lower, and the call connections are more reliable. Some service providers even guarantee their network's uptime. IVCi, for instance, touts a 99.99% guaranteed network uptime behind flagship service IntelliNet, which is used by some of the nation's largest companies.

Industry Standards Have Improved

Video-call quality is constantly improving, with this trend continuing due to H.264, a newly ratified video compression standard by the Switzerland-based International Telecommunication Union. H.264 aims to cut the necessary bandwidth in half for sending video during a videoconference. This translates into improved call clarity and definition and an increase in simultaneous call capacity. It also means that there is a substantial reduction in the bandwidth needed to hold videoconferences. This year a call placed over a 256k IP connection (substandard economy class) looks as good as if was placed on a 384k IP connection (quality business class) last year. This means that companies of all sizes can now enjoy the same quality only larger corporations had access to. Due to the fact that less bandwidth is needed to conduct better quality video calls, IT departments are more interested than ever since they can now devote fewer departmental resources and reduce the recurring operating costs associated with implementing video conferencing.

Varying Uses

Companies of all sizes are employing a combination of conferencing technologies. For instance, companies use videoconferencing to supplement "face-to-face" meetings, where the tangible elements of human presence, body language, and eye contact are all active components of the meeting. This differs somewhat from Webconferenc-ing, which companies are using almost exclusively to collaborate and share documents. In other words, video- and audioconferencing are being used to make faster, smarter decisions, whereas Webconferencing is being used to get work done rapidly in a collaborative environment.

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