I attended a very interesting discussion of video conferencing this week at Video Guidance in Bloomington.  The folks at Video Guidance have helped Blandin Foundation on some of the technical details of video conferencing at some of their conferences.

The primary takeaway from the seminar was that the forward thinking on video communications is to provide Quality and Reliability at Scale.  Meaning that video communications should not be limited to board and conference rooms, but should extend to the desktop and to mobile devices.   Video networks need to extend beyond the enterprise desktop to reach as varied of places from factory floors to people’s homes

Health care examples include doctors being able to monitor patients in critical care units from their homes and nurses being able to monitor post-op patients or the chronically ill in their homes.  Manufacturing examples include video discussions around equipment repair between workers on the factory floor and equipment technicians or between fashion designers in New York and production facilities in China.

Key distinctions in video vendors now rely more on quality software solutions over robust infrastructure.  Video hardware has become more of a commodity.  While the big room systems provide incredible quality and experience, desktop and mobile convenience are going to be be more important in many situations.  For the big sales pitch, the former may be desirable; for everyday collaboration, the latter will be increasingly important.

While Quality and Reliability at Scale is the goal of the industry, they also recognize that Ease of Use and Affordability are things that they customer will also demand.  People are making increasing use of applications like FaceTime and Skype.  While it is hard to argue with free, business customers are seeking a product that is more like Skype Plus ~ an affordable, but professional quality service.  There was some laughs around the concept that while telecom networks are supposed to be reliable at 99.999% (five nines), the free services deliver more like nine fives (55.5555555%).

It is always great to be invited to learn what is happening in emerging technologies.  Learning from vendors is a great way to keep up to date and hear about market trends and new products.