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Bright Future for Video Conferencing


ITWeb (Johannesburg)

June 11, 2004
Posted to the web June 11, 2004

Rodney Weidemann
Johannesburg

As video conferencing becomes more important to business operations, so the world is moving towards a system of unified collaborative communication, a Dimension Data Technovision breakfast was told yesterday.

According to Dan Engel, regional sales manager at Polycom, unified collaborative communication can be described as a system that breaks down distance, time and media barriers and allows communication anywhere, at any time, from any technology and from multiple endpoints.

"It has taken time to get to this point, as in the early to mid-eighties, video was all proprietary and wired, and audio conferencing was just beginning as a communication method," he says.

"By the early nineties we saw the introduction of standards in video operations - the protocols that brought an end to proprietary video - as well as an uptake in mobile phones and the introduction of ISDN."

He says this period also saw the emergence of faster PCs and the start of the public Internet, which meant that video conferencing via PC was possible. This was proved when the first PC-based video conference call was made from the space shuttle Endeavour.

"By the late nineties, standards for video conferencing had been properly developed, while audio conferencing had reached the stage of acceptance as a day-to-day business tool. Conferencing over IP and ISDN had also arrived," says Engel.

"Today we have reached a point where video conferencing over 3G has arrived, meaning that mobile group meetings can be held via cellphone."

He says that in South African terms, video conferencing came into being in 1991, with the installation of the first unit at Unisa, and today 80% of the top 500 companies in the country use it.

"The key issue is that here in SA we don't have to wait for the future to come - the technology is already here."

According to Wessel Pieterse, a convergence specialist at Cisco Systems, the power of face-to-face is something that should never be underestimated.

"One study has shown that around 55% of your impact on someone comes through in your body language, while 38% of the impact is on how the message is said. Only 7% of the impact is related to what is actually said," he claims.

"The beauty of video conferencing is that it reduces the cost of travel, focuses attention specifically on the matters under discussion - since it isn't easy to let the mind drift in a face-to-face situation - and it helps to speed up decision-making."

He says the applications for video conferencing technology are many and varied, from a standard business meeting to a concept like distance learning.

"It could also work for an HR department, for example, that needs to conduct remote interviews, or it could work in the telemedicine field, with doctors conducting remote consultations.

"We are now moving into a world where video is becoming accessible to everyone, in much the same way as the telephone did before it," he says.

"The next step with video is to make it as simple for people to use as they currently find the telephone."

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