From Mobile video conferencing to Telepresence, all kinds of video
conferencing solutions have been in demand in the last six months or so, thanks
to the global recession. Well no surprises here, slowdown has given an
opportunity to all VC vendors, and they are doing everything to cash in on this
opportunity. And why not, Video Conferencing helps enterprises significantly cut
down their costs.
True blue advantages
When it comes to cost cutting, one of the first places where any enterprise
looks at is travel. With technologies like High-Def Video Conferencing and
Telepresence providing 'face to face' experience, an enterprise can think of
saving traveling and associated costs. This also saves a lot of time from
waiting on airports, traffic jams, driving, etc. With all this time saved,
executives can focus on other important issues instantly and make quick
decisions. A lot of people will tell a video conferencing call in the morning is
so much better than taking an early morning flight and going for a meeting. With
a video conferencing solution in place, enterprises can train their employees at
a remote location about a new deployment or process. Earlier if a new solution
was rolled out, few employees across locations would travel to head office,
where they would be provided training, and in turn go back and teach other
employees. Such an approach would result in extra costs and add to confusion.
But with a VC solution in place, employees responsible for training or roll out
of solutions, can directly train employees at remote locations and ensure
solutions to their queries as well as understand a solution completely.
Video Conferencing helps in reducing carbon footprint and so is part of the
bogie called Green IT. Less traveling means less CO2 and other hazardous gases
being emitted to atmosphere. There are many vertical specific advantages that
video conferencing provides:health care (remote treatment), education (providing
remote trainings) etc.
Cheaper options
It's well known that initial investments in technologies like Telepresence or
high-def video conferencing are a bit high. For those who have already deployed
such solutions, find that having one solution isn't enough and it needs to be
expanded by adding personal video conferencing solutions or web conferencing
solutions. Also many organizations looking to deploy video conferencing, but not
interested in making huge investments during slowdown can simply use free
video-conferencing solutions like Skype or even GTalk video. These solutions
work with a decent webcam and don't require much bandwidth either. See the box
for other free video conferencing solutions.
Free and Simple Video Conferencing Solutions |
Oovoo — provides video conferencing, video mail, recoding of video conferencing etc. http://www.oovoo.com TokBox — DimDim — Popular Web conferencing solution. Also supports video Voxox — Supports multi-party video conferencing, file sharing, |