Mobile Video - The Latest Innovations in Enterprise Design

Transcription

1 Mobile Video: Introducing the Final Frontier Mobile video takes communication and collaboration into promising new territories with anywhere, anytime visual connections through any device. Version: Model v1.20, Report v1.9 Communication has reached a significant transformation with the rapid shift from conventional location-based connections to mobile-driven collaboration. According to a recent IDC study, the person-to-person communication trend has quickly moved to data communications in the form of texting, instant messaging, and communication, laying the foundation for the evolution to today s mobile video communications. As a result, the concept of working anywhere, anytime through any device has become a reality. Mobile devices are breaking down the barriers to work and expanding the boundaries of business. This ability to connect, meet, and collaborate with colleagues from anywhere facilitates information sharing, problem solving, and transaction closing with people in different locations. Now these connections are dramatically enhanced with mobile video capabilities that bring the advantages of face-to-face interactions to an on-the-go medium. IDC reports that the powerful combination of mobility and real-time video communications is further enhanced by the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend. 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. Copyright Alinean, IDG and Network World Inc. All rights reserved.

2 Why Now? According to IDC survey results, the trend toward mobile and video are growing hand-in-hand. As mobility skyrockets, 70 percent of survey respondents either currently use videoconferencing or plan to use videoconferencing in the next year. And, while different industries have their own set of optimal applications for going mobile with video collaboration, an array of benefits ring true universally all of which are more important today than ever before. Research has repeatedly shown the best results often come from being able to unite key personnel in face-toface interactions. Mobile video brings people and content together and at the same time further enhances seamless collaboration between individuals and groups around the world. While fighting off competitive threats, organizations depend upon the ability to stay connected with people whether those parties are travelling, working remotely, or based in a different facility. The growing appetite for connectedness is magnified by trends like telecommuting. According to a 2011 forecast from TechCast at George Washington University, even though less than four percent of U.S. private sector workers actually work from home today, signs point to the trend reaching as high as 30 percent by At the same time, new technologies, such as social business and cloud-delivered services, are driving forces in the movement. Mobile video collaboration is the key ingredient for enhanced productivity in these disparate work arrangements, which is proving astounding. According to Wainhouse study entitled Benchmarking the Benefits of Videoconferencing Deployments, video collaboration allows organizations to enjoy reduced time to market of up to 24 percent and reduced downtime of up to 27 percent. Not only do these benefits allow team members to stay focused on the task at hand, they speak volumes when considering the power of being the first to market (i.e., the dominant position of ipad) and the ability to avoid costs associated with downtime (often thousands of dollars per hour). Likewise, the ability to improve teamwork and maintain communication with partners and suppliers are often key contributors to the bottom line. Furthermore, for organizations to truly appreciate the benefits of collaboration there must be a push to support mobility for workers beyond the traditional road warriors. Mobile video collaboration is all about empowering employees wherever they work desk or conference room, in the field or on the road. According to Gartner, this drive toward supporting mobility with rich solutions, including video collaboration, will become a $1 trillion market in the next four years. In addition, Gartner predicts within this decade, most, if not all workers will be mobile to some degree. No business can afford to ignore such a powerful movement. Consumerization Craze This growth can be attributed, in part, to the consumer mobility craze. As the next generation continues to enter the workforce, business leaders are realizing the significance of consumerization and the BYOD trend in the rapid movement of more connected devices into the enterprise. So much so that in the IDG Research Services 2012 Unified Communications and Collaboration study, 67 percent of respondents cite BYOD as the accelerating force in enterprise adoption of enriched mobile unified communications deployments including voice, video and multimedia content. These sentiments are echoed in IDC s research. Specifically, IDC is forecasting that worldwide shipments of media tablets will reach almost 140 million and that smartphones will make up 45 percent of global mobile phone penetration by IDC data also shows that 35.7 percent of consumers who own a tablet also use it for work purposes. As a result, the user base has become acutely aware of differences between consumer and enterprise-grade applications, such as video. While people are personally willing to tolerate different weaknesses such as mediocre service or even questionable security they have significantly different expectations when moving into the work environment. And, fortunately for IT departments these same people have often invested in mobile devices highly capable of utilizing enterprise-level solutions. 2

3 Of course, integrating BYOD devices into the enterprise comes with its own challenges. For instance, IT professionals have to address valid concerns around being able to control access to video, data and security on an employee-owned device. Fortunately, through best practice-based policy development, which often includes MDM solutions, most IT organizations are finding workable arrangements to alleviate concerns. Doing so allows IT to capitalize on the potential benefits of embracing and supporting a BYOD environment. This ultimately includes a new level of partnership with the user base, the ability to embrace powerful devices at an accelerated pace and the willingness to empower significantly more users with mobile video collaboration capabilities. Key Considerations While the benefits associated with mobile video collaboration are quite clear, such deployments require due diligence. As with any investment, decision makers need to understand how a solution will fit within their specific infrastructure and whether or not it makes sense going forward. The IDC research surfaced the following key considerations to widespread adoption of mobile video collaboration: Interoperability: Cited as the biggest challenge within the IDG survey at 47 percent is creating a secure, seamless handoff to multiple networks and enabling integration with solutions in the areas of instant messaging, presence, telephony, Web conferencing, mobile, and social media is key to tying remote video collaboration into the enterprise. Among the most important considerations is the ability to launch video collaboration sessions easily and intuitively from within familiar interfaces and normal workflows, enabling seamless dial-plan integration to connect endpoints and devices from different vendors and consolidating multiple dial-in codes into one. Backward compatibility is crucial as well. No business can afford to rip and replace vital systems simply to support new technologies. Scalability: The growing number of desktop and mobile video users will present increasing scalability challenges for enterprise networks. The requirement for easy setup and management is critical to manage and secure a fast-growing volume of endpoints. Statistically, when more users are registered with the server, more calls are placed. If the number of calls per second exceeds the maximum supported by the server's architecture, the server slows down and starts rejecting or dropping calls both are unacceptable in any business environment. Security: When organizations are considering a BYOD corporate policy, security is usually the first consideration for IT managers. Use of embedded media encryption for videoconferencing, such as H.235 security using 128-bit AES encryption, is among the technological advances that will provide a secure environment for support of remote video collaboration tools. After all, when executives are talking to board members, IT needs to ensure that their conversations and their ability to share content are secure. Ease of use: An easy-to-use video collaboration environment is perhaps the most important feature and affects the user and IT manager in different ways. The user wants ease of use, but simplicity on the surface depends on a number of hidden capabilities at work in the background, including effective firewall traversal, a centralized directory, straightforward authentication, and seamless encryption. The IT manager needs to control access and security and ensure enterprise-class management and redundancy. Planning for Success Understanding the benefits and key considerations around mobile video collaboration is only part of the equation. Embracing a dynamic solution capable of transforming how the organization operates needs to start with a strategic plan. In developing a workable plan, leaders need to take the time to assess and understand the business and user needs, establish realistic goals, and adopt proven measurement tools. Throughout the process, businesses need to remain focused on evolving the human collaboration experience radically improving the way teams work together. Reaching out to a trusted partner like Polycom the global leader in standards-based unified communications solutions can play an instrumental role in rapidly determining the best approach. 3

4 A Line of Business Perspective For many business decision-makers, mobile video collaboration has little to do with technology and everything to do with its application. It s about enabling individuals and teams to make meaningful connections with other people and get information when they need it from wherever they are all without compromising strategic capabilities. That s no small feat when, in today s mobile world, everyone is on the go working in the office one day, at home the next; in New York one week, Hong Kong another. Employees, customers and partners may no longer be tethered to their desks and conference rooms, but they are certainly not without their mobile devices. No matter where they are, they still need to get their jobs done and more; and they re doing it with their mobile devices. So with technologies like mobile video collaboration, the real goal is to enhance communication with new levels of efficiency, while allowing for and ultimately leveraging the new way that individuals and teams prefer to work. With mobile video collaboration, it s the face-to-face interaction that often makes remote employees feel like part of the bigger team, that puts the client at ease, and that gives the service representative the right context to resolve a problem. Such advantages can be applied across industries. In manufacturing, when the production line goes down, shop floor management can visually collaborate with suppliers, customers and topline executives about the unanticipated downtime. In healthcare, patients recovering from stroke can benefit from face-to-face monitoring by a practitioner who is between other patients. The practitioner can view x-rays and lab results while online with the patient. It simply takes space and location out of the equation. From a business perspective, that connection should mirror interactions, water cooler conversations and meeting room discussions. That goes beyond simply putting individuals in touch. They need to connect with enterprise directories. They need to share documents and images with rich media management capabilities. They even need to be able to record, meta tag and archive their discussions. Perhaps most of all, they demand hot, secure failovers between multipoint bridge calls and the security to speak and share information freely. Business decision-makers want mobile video to enhance communication and collaboration, not inhibit it. So they expect all of this to be intuitive and transparent to the user. In today s environment everyone in business works outside of the confined office space, and for many, the mobile device has become the office. Mobile video makes this on-the-go experience richer, vivid and effective in part because face-to-face communication is always better than a telephone call. 4

5 A Matter of Size: Small and Medium Sized Businesses While every business can appreciate the value of face-to-face collaboration on-the-go, the benefits of mobile video collaboration deployment differ slightly by company size. The most obvious difference is that small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) understandably have fewer resources than their enterprise counterparts. Where larger companies have fleets of sales and support personnel, smaller companies get by with a handful. SMBs need to work faster and more productively to keep pace with the competition. Mobile video allows them to do just that. For example, a service representative at one customer site can help another customer at a different location. A sales person can have a one-on-one meeting with a manager and a face-to-face with a customer without leaving their home office. And a CEO can participate in boardroom negotiations in New York from a conference in Japan. Mobile video allows an SMB to be just as flexible and effective as their larger competitors. In addition, video allows SMBs to drastically reduce travel expenses and improve collaboration amongst disparate teams. At the same time, SMBs need to look as sophisticated if not more so than their competitors to succeed in some market spaces. Mobile video collaboration helps level the playing field by allowing individuals to bring in the necessary resources when and where they need them whether it s an engineer on the other side of the state or a lawyer across the country. Customers appreciate when their partners use cutting-edge technology to better serve them; and have come to expect that kind of special treatment in today s tech-centric climate. Employees are equally appreciative of technology, making mobile video a key leverage point in attracting and retaining top-shelf talent especially with the Millennials in the workforce. The method of deployment is often a key pivot point between large and small organizations. For instance, because of the inherent lack of in-house resources, the SMB organization is often set up to utilize video as a service application through a provider. Video as a service approach makes sense for smaller organizations because it sports a lower capital expenditure, fewer maintenance requirements and does not necessitate having a fulltime IT person on staff. When properly sourced, a service-based model still provides all of the richness and capabilities of an enterprise-grade video communications system on-premise, without the investment of owning and deploying infrastructure. The key to successfully deploying mobile video within the SMB environment is to embrace the solution that meets the individual business needs. Understandably, accomplishing this takes due diligence, and often requires asking and answering an array of questions designed to shed light on strategic opportunities. For example, what other IT investments are in place and does the organization intend to integrate mobile video collaboration into existing IT systems or allow it to serve as a disparate solution? In addition, how many people in-house IT, consultants or otherwise will be involved? What are their specific requirements? And, what is the company s preference regarding capital or operational expenses? Successfully deploying a sustainable solution is often a matter of creating the right recipe for individual needs. The goal should be to enable people to use video as their preferred method of collaborating, no matter where they are or what network, carrier, protocol, application, or device they use. 5

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