MARKET REVIEW Video poised to come of
There was a time when video conferencing technology was expensive, problematic to implement and difficult to use. Now, desktop solutions are open and interoperable, affordable, easy to use and suitable for all businesses including vibrant small and mid-market companies. Here’s a snapshot of this growing market opportunity.
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usinesses have hitherto been slow on the uptake of video because of
the need for failsafe solutions which provide the quality and resilience that professional communications require. But all that’s changed. A recent Canalys UC market report for EMEA forecasts that between 2012 to 2014, video shipments will spike as businesses large and small come round to the idea of using video conferencing as an effective and efficient business communications tool. This shift has partly been driven by the popularity of consumer video technologies like Skype that are allowing people to communicate face-to-face across different geographies and time zones, in a cost-effective, efficient and social manner.
“There has never been a better time to look at video collaboration technologies, and we anticipate an exciting 6-12 months ahead,” enthused Claire Macland, Vice President, EMEA channels and go to market, Avaya. “This will be a time when we start to see the democratisation of video brought into every business by employees anxious to collaborate fully and freely, on any device. Our focus is on open and interoperable
solutions that are flexible and meet the needs of businesses of all sizes. This will continue to be our focal point. Our acquisition of Radvision was an important step in realising our ambitions to make accessible, enterprise class, affordable video a key part of our real-time collaboration portfolio. Where video used to be expensive, it is now affordable, where it was complicated, it’s now simple, and where it was only for the few, now it’s accessible to everyone.”
Macland expects to see continued demand for solutions like Avaya Scopia Desktop which allows businesses to extend a room system video application to PC and Mac users for high definition voice, video and data collaboration. Employees can connect from anywhere, create a virtual conference room and invite other desktop or mobile users and room systems. “It fosters greater collaboration, leading to better productivity, allowing employees to view presentations, spreadsheets, documents and images shared in conference on the move and in real- time,” added Macland. “It also simplifies deployment and management for the IT department as there’s no complex licensing
fees or installation issues. It’s highly secure and fits naturally within the existing IT environment.”
At the same time, Avaya is encouraging partners to get to grips with what video can do for organisational set-up and how it can influence the way people work. “Interestingly, employees are gradually moving to an open door approach to video,” noted Macland. “They’re getting to their desks, opening up their video rooms and leaving them open for people to pop in and chat. Here we see a clear shift from scheduled collaboration to spontaneous collaboration. This is where it gets really interesting for our business partners. Whereas they’ve always been very good at looking at and understanding business issues, the great business partners today are the ones who can talk to customers about behavioural changes in an organisation, understand what this means in terms of technology needs and play it back to the organisation. With rapid adoption of technologies like video causing behavioural change, partners need to become analysts of organisational behaviour.”
There’s also another key point to consider in that
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Claire Macland
over the past few years, critical factors have been gradually aligning to ensure video can finally and successfully move into the mainstream. “We now have the sophisticated hardware, the quality networks, the consumer appetite and the required interoperability,” commented Macland. “The coming together of these factors is really setting the stage for video to take off as analysts predict.”
In Aastra’s view the key growth areas for video are segmented with differing
use across vertical markets. For example, Aastra is seeing desktop media phone video technology selling into markets such as healthcare where HD sharing of x-rays and files is required, and construction, where someone can share large drawings or take a video device around a site to present to a board meeting. “The growth in the general business market will mostly come from the sales of PC, tablet and smartphone video solutions as desktop media phones are not usually required for these users, and mobility is
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