Virtually Speaking

[#1]

 

At this week’s Interop 2011 event, I had the opportunity to speak on a panel about “Future Directions of Telepresence” alongside industry colleagues from BurstPoint, Cisco and High Speed Video. The panel was moderated by John Bartlett, a voice, video and data application performance analyst at NetForecast.

This discussion focused on the continual evolution of collaborative communications and specifically the transition from videoconferencing to telepresence and the future applications for these technologies. Moving forward, I anticipate that we’ll see three trends that will impact the telepresence market.

1. Companies will continue to be forced to do more with less and will look for ways to further reduce costs throughout the enterprise. Business travel was one of the first areas to get cut during the recent economic downturn, but the rising cost of fuel coupled with lost employee productivity will drive organizations to further reduce travel. Companies will turn to visual collaboration solutions to reduce the need for travel without sacrificing the bottom line. During the past few years, collaboration technology vendors have been able to unlock the immersive telepresence studio experience and scale it to room and desktop environments. Combine this will a lower total cost of ownership and visual collaboration technologies have never been more accessible to businesses of all sizes.
2. The remote workforce will continue growing as globalization increases. More and more companies are working with a distributed workforce as they aim to create a “best team” environment within their organization. These teams are spread across geographies and require collaboration tools that move beyond voice to offer “face-to-face” interactions. Telepresence technologies, and specifically visual collaboration tools for the desktop, will be critical for helping these teams function at the highest levels, regardless of geography.
3.  The move from executive-only videoconferencing to bring video to the full employee base.

Today’s technologies enabling better price points, could bring video to every employee who wants it. This is now possible and attributable to software-based technologies and new codecs such as SVC. Because of these advancements more people in the workplace (and outside of it) will have access to enterprise quality video conferencing. Add to that, the demand for mobile, which will drive video communications to even more people and devices.  I believe that having video on the handset will evolve the same way mobile phones grew popular despite more mature and “bullet proof” landlines  – meaning that the convenience of having it anywhere, anytime in the form factor users want (mobile phone) will attract users who will simply deal with any “learning curves” carriers may face in its delivery.

Best, Marcio

To learn more about the HP Visual Collaboration Solutions demonstrated at Interop 2011, please visit www.hp.com/go/visual-collaboration.