CompareBusinessProducts.com VIDEO CONFERENCING
You've probably heard a lot about the benefits that video conferencing can bring a business like yours. They range from savings on business travel to improved employee rapport and communication. So deciding to make video conferencing part of your arsenal of business tools can be a no-brainer. You may even have already made the decision. But choosing the right solution can be a bit more complicated. Part of the complication stems from the rapid evolution of video conferencing. Not only is the technology becoming more powerful and affordable, the number of solutions to choose from is exploding as well. This multitude of choices can be a double-edged sword, however. On one hand, it boosts your chances of finding the ideal solution to fit your needs. On the other, it increases the number of decisions you have to get right. CompareBusinessProducts.com (888) 852-5226 2
One of the biggest of these decisions is the choice between premises and cloud solutions. Premises solutions represent the traditional approach to video conferencing. You buy and operate both the infrastructure and the end-user equipment, or endpoints, necessary to support video conferences. The cloud approach is a more recent phenomenon. Typically you buy only end-user equipment. The provider operates the infrastructure equipment in its data center, charging you a fee for the service. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages. Which one is right for you will depend on a number of factors. One of the most important of these factors is cost. With premises solutions, you pay up front for the infrastructure equipment and endpoints. The main piece of infrastructure equipment is the MCU, or multipoint control unit, which combines the individual users' video streams into a single multiparty conference. With cloud solutions, by contrast, the only upfront cost is endpoints. And with some services, there's not even that, since they work through free client software or Web browsers on Webcam-equipped PCs. Either way, eliminating the need to buy infrastructure equipment can make cloud services quite affordable. As such, the cloud approach makes video conferencing accessible for many smaller businesses for the first time. But the cost calculation is not as straightforward as it might seem. On one hand, the total cost of infrastructure equipment isn't just purchase price. It also includes things like service contracts, software upgrades and the like. More important, installing, running and maintaining the equipment requires considerable technical expertise. Thus it may necessitate hiring or contracting IT staff that would otherwise be unnecessary. CompareBusinessProducts.com (888) 852-5226 3
At the same time, paying ongoing fees to cloud-based providers can add up. The typical writedown for communications equipment is seven years. So choosing the most cost-effective solution requires comparing equipment costs against the fees for that period. And different cloud-based providers charge in different ways, such as by the user minute, by the number of subscribers, or by the maximum number of participants allowed in a conference. Depending on your expected usage patterns, the total cost of different solutions could vary considerably. In addition, some premises solutions also reduce or eliminate the cost of infrastructure equipment. They may replace the MCU with a cheaper technology, such as video routing software running on standard servers. They may provide MCU software that runs on your own servers. Or they may incorporate MCU functionality in their endpoints, so you don't need to buy separate infrastructure equipment. Some equipment vendors also offer their own cloud-based services. These tie their endpoints together, again without need for purchase of MCUs. Another crucial factor is the quality of the video conferencing experience you get. You definitely don't want the video image to break up or freeze, or connections to fail altogether, midway through a conference. Cloud-based solutions typically transport the video streams between separate locations over the public Internet, even when the locations involved are your own branch offices. This means video quality is subject to conditions on your corner of the Internet. Premises-based solutions can deliver video calls between your locations over your corporate data network. This provides more control and thus better assured quality. CompareBusinessProducts.com (888) 852-5226 4
On the other hand, some cloud providers bundle their solutions with transport, so that they're providing both the video conferencing service and the IP connection that it runs over. That means they too can provide end-to-end control of the video streams, and thus assurances of quality. And even cloud-based solutions that rely on the public Internet can employ infrastructure and other technology that helps them minimize or eliminate the quality issues inherent in that approach. Cost and quality both come into play in another cloud-related decision you may encounter. Free Internet video conferencing and chat applications have been getting a lot of attention recently. Skype is the best known of these, but imitators are popping up rapidly. These services typically work only through client software or browsers on PCs. That makes them popular among consumers, because the only cost is for the Webcam. Although these services too are a form of cloud-based solutions, they don't manage their infrastructure the way commercial services do to assure quality. As such, they won't be the best option for businesses. Connectivity issues may also affect your choice between cloud and premises approaches. Premises solutions tend to be integrated systems, so the infrastructure and end-user equipment are designed to work best together. Cloud-based services, by contrast, are increasingly trying to connect the widest possible variety of endpoints, both hardware and software. This approach can be especially appealing to companies that may already have different types of equipment due to mergers or acquisitions, or who may want to hold video conferences with other companies with different types of endpoints. All of this sets up a familiar tradeoff. Integrated premises solutions, because they are designed to work together, may have more powerful or specialized features. Cloud solutions may offer fewer or less-powerful capabilities in order to work through a broader variety of endpoints. CompareBusinessProducts.com (888) 852-5226 5
Scalability issues may likewise help tip the cloud/premises decision one way or another. Cloud-based solutions can make it easier to add or subtract users or sites. Beyond buying endpoints, all that's necessary is to call the provider and increase the number of registered users. With premises solutions, adding users may require buying and installing new infrastructure equipment. This can take a lot of time and money. Or it may be easier if you planned ahead and bought infrastructure equipment with more capacity than you needed at the moment. Either way, being able to scale up quickly adds up to flexibility. And that can be useful if your businesses has to respond quickly to changing conditions. Video conferencing can bring you enormous benefits. And it is becoming increasingly affordable for companies of any size. But there are a lot of things to take into account when shopping for a solution. Chief among these is whether to go with a cloud or premises solution. The best way to make that decision is to not just look at the most obvious factors, but to consider a variety of relevant factors, from cost and quality to connectivity and scalability. CompareBusinessProducts.com (888) 852-5226 6