Buyer's Guide to Video Conferencing

Over the past couple of years, organizations worldwide have started to invest

considerably in video conferencing. One of the large video conferencing

providers claims that it has been approximately adding over 800 new customers

every quarter globally while experiencing a 45 percent increase in the first

half of '09 as compared to that of '08. Main reasons behind this phenomenal

growth still remain the same i.e. cost cutting, going green, etc. Apart from

growth, another good thing happening with video conferencing is that vendors are

constantly innovating. Almost every vendor wants to provide the total solution

to meet demands of enterprises -be it desktop video conferencing, web

conferencing, collaboration or even industry specific solutions such as for

healthcare. This in turn creates a confusion for enterprises to decide as to

which solution to buy. Read on to find out what all you need to consider before

buying a video conferencing solution.

Things to consider



Choosing the right video conferencing solution can be difficult. So, before

you even start speaking to a vendor, you need to clearly define your needs and

goals. This would help you determine whether you require a total solution or a

desktop video conferencing solution or even a web conferencing system. You need

to be clear on whether you have ample bandwidth available or you would need to

invest on it. Also you need to determine, the maximum number of sites you would

require to connect to a conference, whether you would be communicating with your

clients, partners etc. outside your firewall. If yes, then you need to figure

out the sensitivity of information going out and also the kind of encryption you

would need. Equally important is finding out how much of content sharing would

be required over VC -whether you will be sharing spreadsheets, files, etc, over

video conferencing. Last, not the least, will you train your employees to make

best use of the solution? Do you need to record video conferences for later use?

There are various strategies for deploying a video conferencing solution. A

common one is to deploy a mix of solutions, such as TelePresence, for top

management who need to take business critical decisions quickly. For middle

management, you can go for a Web-based video conferencing, where a small lag

won't cause much of an issue. Recently we have seen an implementation wherein an

enterprise has decided to go for desktop video conferencing for the entire

management, top and middle, so that everyone can make calls as and when needed,

doing away with the trouble to see if the room is available for a particular day

and time. Since that was a geographically dispersed company, with its employees

regularly needing to collaborate with those at the other location, the solution

worked very well .

When deciding upon a video conferencing solution, it's important to see how

well it integrates with your existing solutions. Before you zero down on a

single solution, try some for a while. This would give you a chance to see the

features as well as other aspects in action right in your environment. Support

is another crucial part to heed to. If your company is new to video

conferencing, than ask the vendor if they provide any sort of trainings and if

you would need to shell out extra for that.

High-def video conferencing



When going for a high definition video conferencing, you would need to look

at things like display/monitor size, type of display -plasma, LCD or a rear

projection. You would also need to consider the resolution of the display. Here

again the size of the display will depend upon the size of the conference room

and maximum number of people who can be present for a video conferencing. In

case of high definition video conferencing, you also need to figure out how many

displays would be required by your business. Most of the vendors support up to

two displays. This gives users advantage of showing full screen video or data on

both the displays.