White Paper Video Conferencing Any Way You Want It Contents Introduction....2 Trends Changing the Nature of Business....2 Mobile in High Def....2 The Cloud with a Silver Lining....3 BYOD....3 Beating Inoperability....3 Video by VoIP....4 Customer Support....4 On Your Desktop....4 Telepresence Suites....4 Healthcare Saving $6 Billion a Year...5 Better Care with Technology....5 Education Embraces Video Conferencing...5 A Fundamental Shift....6 About Ziff Davis B2B Ziff Davis B2B is a leading provider of research to technology buyers and high-quality leads to IT vendors. As part of the Ziff Davis family, Ziff Davis B2B has access to over 50 million in-market technology buyers every month and supports the company s core mission of enabling technology buyers to make more informed business decisions. Contact Ziff Davis B2B 100 California Street, 4th Fl., San Francisco, CA 94111 Tel: 415.318.7200 Fax: 415.318.7219 Email: b2bsales@ziffdavis.com www.ziffdavis.com Copyright 2013 Ziff Davis B2B. All rights reserved.
Introduction According to a new report from Global Industry Analysts, the video conferencing market will reach $10.8 billion by the year 2015. A study from Stanford University focused on the evolution of the work place concludes, The technological advances achieved in the past few decades have brought about a revolution in the business world. Employees no longer need to be physically with their clients and co-workers; instead they can communicate effectively at home, at a distant office or across the world. The Aberdeen Group predicts, The future of global business depends on harnessing the innovation of geographically distributed employees. Trends Changing the Nature of Business One of the seminal technologies enabling this shift in how we work is video conferencing. Companies that need to do face-to-face business from anywhere are driving a dramatic increase in the adoption of video for business communications. Real time video from mobile phone screens to room-sized immersive telepresence environments has the power to evoke the intimacy of a face-to-face meeting by connecting callers virtually. Video delivers the human element to real-time communications, conveying the body language and other non-verbal cues that are often key to human interactions. All of this, and no plane tickets are necessary. In fact, Wainhouse Research reports that, on average, video conferencing reduces travel expenses by 30%, sales related costs by 24%, and time-to-market by 24%. Video conferencing saves money, drives sales and improves customer relationships; but until recently, robust solutions for business have been expensive and limited by proprietary technologies. Not anymore. A look at the current trends and technologies shaping and driving this shift in business communications reveals why, going forward, businesses can have video conferencing any way they want it. Mobile in High Def More and more users want their video available outside the conference room. According to the most recent Census Bureau report, 9.5 percent of the U.S. workforce 4.2 million Americans work away from the office, at home, or on the go. Frost & Sullivan predicts that joining web conferences from mobile devices this year will increase almost three times over last year. Low-latency, high-quality videoconferencing over IP networks is now possible on mobile platforms. With larger video screens, 4G speeds and the ability to encode and decode real-time video, smart phones and tablets are becoming the devices of choice for online collaboration. ziffdavis.com 2 of 6
IDC estimates that mobile devices will take over PCs as the primary source for accessing the web this year. Smartphone shipments rose 36 percent worldwide, while PC shipments fell 3 percent the first annual decline since 2001. Mobile video collaboration enabled by apps like Skype and FaceTime is moving video conferencing out of the office and into the hands of more people on the go. That is a lot of data, and the video files are getting bigger as users start to demand uncompressed video. How do you store and serve up that much information? The Cloud with a Silver Lining The Cloud and video conferencing are built for one another. IDC calls cloud computing the foundation for technology s next 20 years of growth. IBM announced that their Cloud computing revenue grew by 80% in 2012, and they expect cloud computing to deliver $7 billion by 2015. More and more providers and businesses are using the cloud to handle video conferencing information so that it can be accessed on any device. Polycom s CloudAXIS Suite is one of the enterprise videoconferencing solutions capable of uniting various video platforms, including Facebook, Google and Skype into one cloud for easy communication. Avistar Communications, another leading provider of unified visual communications solutions, offers an all-software, standards-based and fully virtualized videoconferencing architecture enabled by the cloud. Avistar reports, in its annual list of expected industry trends, that 2013 will bring an accelerated growth for cloud-based video conferencing services. BYOD The trends report predicts, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) will become the accepted approach to office technology in 2013, because BYOD delivers more flexibility while driving down costs. Employees want their own computing devices in the work place as well as at home, and the connectivity of corporate networks at the office makes HD video conferencing beautiful. Avistar predicts that software-driven solutions and cloud services will push out traditional expensive hardware-based solutions, so BYOD becomes very doable. Users want communications solutions that offer any-to-any connectivity, with online meetings that interoperate with standards-based room systems as well as video chat clients. Beating Inoperability The trends report predicts, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) will become the accepted approach to office technology in 2013, because BYOD delivers more flexibility while driving down costs. Employees want their own computing devices in the work place as well as at home, and the connectivity of corporate networks at the office makes HD video conferencing beautiful. Avistar predicts that software-driven solutions and cloud services will push out traditional expensive hardware-based solutions, so BYOD becomes very doable. Users want communications solutions ziffdavis.com 3 of 6
that offer any-to-any connectivity, with online meetings that interoperate with standards-based room systems as well as video chat clients. Video by VoIP VoIP providers now support a wide range of video conferencing solutions everything from software to full video conferencing systems, video-phones and webcams. VoIP services offer a full set of features from a variety of suppliers including big players like Cisco, Polycom and SONY. VoIP systems are not going away because they can provide complete scalability and are easy on the budget. Customer Support Customer satisfaction is key to any company s success. Loyal customers purchase more frequently and recommend your business to others. Maintaining relationships with these buyers is vital, so video conference software providers like Nefsis are enabling better customer support through online video conferencing with a full-suite of desktop remote control, file transfer, and other help desk tools tailored for customer support. On Your Desktop A recent review from PCWorld confirmed that the new generation of SaaS-based tools supporting video conferencing is getting faster and more user-friendly. When clients today need video enabled on their desktops, there are a lot of great choices. A look at just a few of the picks highlighted in the review shows what the current landscape looks like. Adobe Connect costs $55 a month per host and operates with Windows, Mac or Linux desktops, ios, BlackBerry and Android mobile clients. Cisco WebEx touts a free version limited to a three-person meeting. $49 per month serves up to nine hosts and 25 participants. Access is browser based and WebEx supports ios, BlackBerry and Android mobile devices. Citrix GoToMeeting charges $49 per host per month, requires a desktop client Windows or Mac and supports ios and Android mobile devices with up to six video streams, all in HD. Microsoft Lync has fees on a per-user basis at $6 a month. It supports ios, Windows Phone and Android mobile devices. Telepresence Suites Hardware based videoconferencing solutions may be losing ground to software-based systems, but, even with HD, there is no mobile equivalent to replace a high-end telepresence suite. Dedicated telepresence venues provide HD video from a custom-built room, designed to enable true immersion simulating every aspect of an in-person meeting. ziffdavis.com 4 of 6
Interactive capabilities enable integrated presentations to evoke the feeling of really being there seeing the white board or making real eye contact through cameras carefully placed to evoke this experience. These robust suites for business are still proliferating. Nowhere is the power of video conferencing or, in particular the immersive possibility of telepresence, more compelling than in the field of healthcare. It is just one of the sectors trending toward video conferencing and offers a compelling success story. Healthcare Saving $6 Billion a Year A research report for the NSF (National Science Foundation) by Case Western Reserve University on videoconferencing in health care calls it a brand new collaborative platform for medicine. The study concludes that it s almost better than meeting your doctor in person, since it provides high definition, multipoint videoconferencing, with stereoscopic sound and full uncompressed data that produces images sharper and clearer than those that can be seen by the naked eye. With patients and doctors meeting by video, the NFS reports that, The savings to the health care system will pay for the cost of a new national broadband infrastructure many times over. Video conferencing brings transportation costs to zero, and for some patients with disabilities, getting to the doctor can require an ambulance, costing about $1,200 a round trip. The savings to healthcare, however, are much greater than the cost of transportation video conferencing can also help save lives. Better Care with Technology There are a very high number of hospital readmissions for heart failure. According to the Case University study, these returns to the hospital cost Medicare an estimated $6 billion a year and are largely preventable if patients are well monitored through frequent examinations. Video conferencing puts doctors in contact with their patients at home, so they can spot warning signs before a patient s condition worsens and necessitates a hospital visit. Our elderly often have dozens of medications they are trying to keep track of every day. With video conferencing, rather than asking a patient with failing eyesight to read what s on their prescription bottles, doctors can virtually zoom in to examine the labels, so no mistakes can happen. Education Embraces Video Conferencing Another domain where video conferencing excels and is being increasingly adopted is education. The case study of a Cisco telepresence solution provided for Duke University reports that the University is now able to extend the interactive classroom around the world and save $2.5 million annually in communication system support costs. And that is just one school. ziffdavis.com 5 of 6
Video conferencing in education not only extends the reach of the faculty, but it provides students and teachers alike access to content and experts anywhere in the world. Students can experience everything from live museum tours to a real-time look at the aurora borealis from the top of the world. They can collaborate and learn across cultures and borders. A high school class in San Francisco studying Mayan culture can now connect live with a class in Cancun, on the Yucatan Peninsula, for a tour of a temple that still stands as a testament to the Mayan civilization. The potential and possibilities are endless. A Fundamental Shift Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently blogged, This is a fundamental shift in our business that began several years ago. Video is changing the landscape of B2B and B2C communications. A current study by Powwownow, indicates that 75% of senior management predict that video conferencing will replace conference calls to become the preferred choice for business communication, and 70% of executives with SMBs (Small to Medium Size Businesses) now prefer a video conference to traveling for a face-to-face meeting. Virtual is getting very real. ziffdavis.com 6 of 6