This was before webcams, Skype and Google Hangouts and the idea was that businesses would be able to save on travel and accommodation costs by having their executives meet via video.
While VC did not take off as anticipated, particularly beyond the larger companies who, at present, are relatively well invested with some having up to 100 rooms nationwide, there continues a drive to improve accessibility.
In South Africa, Kathea, a distributor of visual communications solutions, believes we can reach a point where you could even communicate with your doctor or lawyer via video conferencing because of the extended capacity cloud computing provides us. The first part of their foray into cloud video conferencing is with the Polycom RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite.
Alain Schram, CEO at Kathea, says, “what cloud access does is make it possible for one to multipoint video conferencing as long as you have a browser on your PC, laptop, smartphone or tablet. I can invite people into my conference via a link through email, for example, and they are brought in immediately.”
The biggest challenge that we still face is speed and cost of bandwidth to which Schram responds that, “while we do have high costs of connectivity, these have been dropping and will continue to come down dramatically. That said, I can comfortably hold a VC on my tablet, with 3G, for an hour. And with different cities, like Cape Town and Tshwane, and companies pushing wi-fi, in some instances free, it will become easier to connect.”
…moving around the plant on a single day, it can take an individual three hours to go from one end to the other…
Standards for Internet video conferencing are also becoming less proprietary and more accessible while the need is becoming greater for even SMEs, particularly in terms of interacting with their clients. Schram gives the example of one of their potential clients, a large manufacturer.
“Their challenge is that, just moving around the plant on a single day, it can take an individual three hours to go from one end to the other. With an iPad and VC, he could literally just contact the engineer back in the office to address an on-site problem.”
While Kathea is currently running a trial service, it is available for the segments of the enterprise market that already have an infrastructure in place. Polycom RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite is scalable and can be setup as a private cloud service, made available by organisations to their employees and clients, or as a hybrid between private and public.
For public cloud, Kathea will provide VC as a service, enabling SMEs, for example, to pay a monthly service fee. Schram truly believes that the applications are numerous, including a video call centre for banks or insurance companies, video consultation for lawyers and doctors, and so on.
Additional features include the ability to link to contacts from Skype, Google Talk and Facebook as well as running scheduled meetings, group and/or participant mute, recording facility, automated emails with calendar invitations and the web link, and so on.
Kathea is counting on online video conferencing truly emerging as a viable business option (for all levels) that is secure and reliable, hence the drive with Polycom. The potential to save money and cut down on travelling time is there. An interesting prospect.
Article Source: Video conference in the Cloud
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