It may once have been over-hyped and underwhelming, but the quality and cost-effectiveness of video conferencing systems available now are very impressive.
In today's climate of budget pressures and increased security concerns, videoconferencing is a technology whose time has come.
Quite a few companies were burnt around five years ago by extravagant video conferencing promises.
Sadly, like many emerging technologies, the product just did not live up to the hype. In most cases it was too clumsy and difficult for the staff to use, requiring a small army of technicians to maintain, and the image and sound quality--well, what quality?
Many of these systems today are simply sitting gathering dust as the potential users gave up long ago through sheer frustration. So why bother with it now?
Well, for a start, things have come a hell of a long way in five years. Software algorithms and silicon, the compressors and decoders, have improved in leaps and bounds.
The key reasons for the resurgence of videoconferencing are:
- Lower pricing both in terms of hardware/software and transmission.
- Improved quality with low latencies, higher frame rates and industry adoption of standard protocols such as H.320 (ISDN) and H.323 (IP).
- Ease of use has improved out of sight and once configured many are as simple to use as a remote control TV, which in turn leads to greater acceptance by potential users.
- Maintenance no longer requires specialists--system can often be maintained by your network or IT administrator.
- It is seen a low risk alternative to travelling to remote sites. However, unlike a standalone PC for example, just having better local software and faster hardware is not the complete answer; the link between your two or more sites is critical.
Hot topics
The hot videoconferencing topic at the moment is using IP over a broadband network but in reality only a small percentage of videoconferencing sold is over IP, the vast majority is ISDN. Why?
Quite simply most of the time Australia's cost-effective broadband is just not up to scratch as far as videoconferencing is concerned. In talking to many of the vendors we found that often clients would propose the use of their broadband network to distribute the service only to find that, when they delved deeper the true bandwidth available to videoconferencing, it was not what they expected.
Surprisingly the cost to upgrade the existing infrastructure is often far greater than installing dedicated ISDN links. The advantage of an ISDN link is that it is a point-to-point system, so security is far greater than broadband.
Add to that the fact that the bandwidth is guaranteed--a 128kb/s Onramp 2 is reliable and will always provide the same performance. Could you say the same for an ADSL connection for example?
The January 2002 issue of ZDNet Australia's Technology & Business Magazine contains reviews of video conferencing products, including Editor's Choice Awards for the best products. For subscription information, visit Technology & Business.
Ye well
We just accept the Telstra Monopoly's pricing on ISDN, and their very poor service on ADSL. Nobody in particular magazines like your are nto taking about these issues which are crippling the inovation of many companies in Australia. We are in global markets yet isolated geographically and our telecom industry is still a monopoluy it doesnt matte how you look at it. Every time I try to ge some Internet innovation which i read about, I am told "not available in Austrlaia Mate" or Not approved by Telstra yet etc etc