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 NEWSMeeting via video offers big rewards By Ana Orubeondo September 7, 2001 1:01 pm PT IN THESE TRYING economic times, companies must pursue strategies that accomplish more tasks with fewer resources -- all without sacrificing customer service. One plan of attack getting more attention is videoconferencing, which brings down travel costs while allowing employees to continue meeting with their clients far and wide.
Cutting travel cost and eliminating travel time are not the only motivations for embracing videoconferencing. Because videoconferencing allows users to exchange information in a visually compelling way, it can be applied to almost any situation to improve the quality and effectiveness of communication. Whether used to convey product introductions, sales promotions, employee training, or management messages or to enhance collaborative projects among dispersed locations, videoconferencing is increasingly seen as a practical tool that can confer a competitive advantage. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) establishes the standards for videoconferencing and other transmission technologies, helping to ensure that videoconferencing systems from diverse manufactures will be able to communicate with one another. Until the ITU introduced H.320, vendors built systems that, although highly effective, were based on different standards and notoriously incompatible. The H.320 standard, which defines the operating modes and transmission speeds for videoconferencing systems, includes specifications that identify how products from various systems work together. Standards are constantly being revised but are reaching a level of stability that will enable most systems to talk to each other with an acceptable level of functionality. What makes a good videoconferencing system? That depends on your company's needs. Determining if you need a room-based system, midrange system, desktop system, or videophones is the easy part -- you also must consider price, platforms, interoperability, and administration capabilities. And if you plan to link participants from more than two sites, you must also install MCUs (multipoint conference units), switches that allow participants to see one another, converse, and share a document over the real-time videoconferencing broadcast. Videoconferencing in recent years has become an increasingly accepted form of communication for businesses that want to save money and increase collaboration among dispersed employees, thus enhancing their productivity. Originally, videoconferencing was seen as a method to link people at remote locations over WANs. More recently, videoconferencing has been used to link desktop computer users over LANs in an effort to obtain the same benefits within a building or across a campus environment. A room-based system uses one or more large screens in a dedicated meeting room equipped with environmental controls. Components include cameras, microphones, and auxiliary equipment, and are usually permanent. Prices for room-based systems start at $100,000 but can go much higher as more sophisticated equipment and features are added -- outfitting, for example, a conference room vs. an auditorium. If your organization does not rely on videoconferencing, but considers it important to have on hand, a midrange system may be the way to go. This portable system uses one screen and no more than two cameras and three microphones. Prices range from $20,000 to $50,000, depending on the quality and power you require. If the higher-end solutions are out of your price range, but you still want the spontaneity and interactivity of in-person meetings, opt for desktop videoconferencing. Desktop systems allow organizations to leverage existing assets; using widely available Ethernet networks makes this technology more accessible, less costly, and easier to deploy. Equipped systems cost $1,200 to $5,000 per unit. Some desktop videoconferencing systems support TCP/IP, making them particularly useful in campus-style settings and for remote offices. TCP/IP support ensures that systems can be used in conjunction with standard bridges, routers, and dial-up lines, giving users convenient, cost-effective access to videoconferencing capabilities, particularly in areas where ISDN service is not available. Support for TCP/IP also eliminates the need for expensive on-premise switching systems and potentially costly telephone company surcharges for the routing services that are required of ISDN networks. Finally, videophones are great for one-on-one communication. No longer a toy from The Jetsons, the videophone includes a small screen, built-in camera, video coder/decoder, audio system, and keypad. Prices start at approximately $1,000 for models that plug into ordinary phone lines. Videoconferencing systems are now readily available, but that doesn't mean they are any less challenging to deploy -- it is much more than an exercise in network-capacity planning and desktop systems management. It is also an undertaking in business planning. And with the unusual variation in options (with significant differences in quality, price, flexibility, and functionality), matching business needs and opportunities against available technologies is no easy task. The variation in videoconferencing systems architectures demands a careful review of existing and anticipated technology infrastructure, making deployment challenging. Start by answering some basic questions, such as who will be using the system and for what. It will help answer what video and audio quality you can get by with, as well as how flexible your network must be to accommodate document and application sharing tools. Note, too, that Internet solutions will make sense over the long term, even though Internet videoconferencing is really not ready for business use at this time. Videoconferencing finally ranks among strategically significant communications tools. The ultimate low-cost, ubiquitous method of videoconferencing may well be the Internet, although image quality is not yet as high as that achievable over high-speed LANs and digital WAN services. But its exploding popularity should help to quickly resolve that as well as standards issues among vendors. Whether you need a system to gather a few colleagues or to present large-scale conferences, you can now find a videoconferencing system any speaker would be happy to use.  Senior Analyst Ana Orubeondo (ana_orubeondo@infoworld.com) covers wireless and mobile technologies.
 RELATED ARTICLES  Videoconferencing takes controlRELATED SUBJECTS Business IntelligenceEnterprise ApplicationsNetworkingSPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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