With technology moving into the realm of affordability, video conferencing is growing by almost 20% every year. Advanced video codecs promise to further reduce the operating cost of this technology. By Pupul Dutta
According to available industry data, the video conferencing market in India can be pegged at Rs 500 crores for hardware (end points and bridges) and it is growing at 18-20%. “Video conferencing services market would be around Rs 75 crores currently and growing at 13-15%,” said Gopi Gopinath, President and COO, Reliance Business Services.
Companies have largely realized the importance of using life-like collaboration tools for facilitating interactive environments, enabling employees to utilize their time more efficiently and save on travel costs. The SMB segment’s adoption is being spurred by the uptake of Cloud-based services and the growing use of mobile devices.
Vendors selling telepresence services are offering hosted C-suites to middle managers for collaboration with the extended enterprise that encompasses vendors, partners and customers.
“If you look at the video conferencing industry, it has shown the highest growth so far. It is also expected to be the strongest segment in the next few years. Collaboration and zero travel cost are its biggest benefits. The endpoints and services will go hand in hand. It could be either through an on- premise model or managed by a service provider. In any case, the entire sector is expected to see tremendous growth,” said Parminder Kaur, Industry Manager, ICT Practice, South Asia and Middle East at Frost and Sullivan.
Gopinath commented, “High Definition or HD has become the default standard for video as that is what most end users are exposed to, viz., HD displays, TVs, Blu Ray, etc. Most new video conferencing equipment (80%) sold tends to be HD. End users have become extremely demanding and want a high quality video experience irrespective of the device’s form factor and network connectivity involved.”
Trends in VC-ville
The evolution of HD video quality has almost phased out standard definition. Advanced video codecs including H.263, H.264 as well as Scalable Video Codecs are bringing down the amount of bandwidth required while optimizing quality of video. This is true of even unmanaged networks. Secondly, the affordability of video conferencing end points has risen thanks to the entry of newer players such as LifeSize and Huawei.
Raghu Belur, Senior Director – Engineering, LifeSize explained, “As long as video conferencing was restricted to boardrooms, the market was limited as the cost of entry is high and the ability to justify that quantum of expenditure is challenging. Therefore, only a few large companies adopted this technology to begin with. At the lowest end, people preferred to use Skype. Now, with better network and device availability, the market has got a fresh perspective on video conferencing.”
Gopinath of Reliance Business Services said, “Software endpoints are making video conferencing ubiquitous across form factors—from desktops to tablets and smartphones. Mobility has reduced one of the biggest barriers to video conferencing—the need to be in a dedicated video conferencing room. Moreover, thanks to integration with enterprise Unified Communications (UC), mail and messaging video conferencing is becoming a key component of UC.”
“The carbon footprint of intercontinental travel has been recognized and this is leading to increased use of video conferencing to substitute for long distance travel from a green perspective,” noted Peter Quinlan, Vice President, Integrated Business Video Services, Tata Communications.
Cloud-based solutions for video conferencing are a hit among enterprises. Neeraj Gill, Managing Director, India and SAARC, Polycom, “Polycom has unveiled the RealPresence Cloud, a wholesale, carrier-ready offering to enable service providers to quickly bring VaaS offerings to market. RealPresence Cloud solutions are designed specifically for service providers to equip them with carrier-grade infrastructure, endpoints and services, which they need to offer to businesses of all sizes on subscription-based solutions for video collaboration.”
Video conferencing as a Service
Companies that have bought equipment are saddled with issues such as reliability, scheduling / calendar management, availability of bridging ports, firewall restrictions, continued use of old ISDN based legacy networks etc. The solution, for some, is to go with a service provider.
“We have been providing video conferencing services on a Cloud model (bridging standards-based video conferencing facility on a pay-as-you-use basis) for the past seven years. We were amongst the first service providers to launch managed video conferencing services,” said Gopinath of Reliance Business Services.
“We also facilitate adoption and usage by integrating video conferencing with the workflow thereby impacting all business functions right from recruitment, training, reviews, meetings, market research, AGMs, etc,” he added.
Cisco believed that it was necessary to offer better collaborative tools. “Offering effective ways for enterprise subscribers to collaborate with their customers, partners, and suppliers necessitates the use of premium bandwidth services. Our TelePresence Exchange System ensures the integration of full-high definition video, advanced audio and interactive collaboration tools with the underlying network as the platform to deliver immersive meetings, interoperability and advanced media services. This also enhances the telepresence collaboration experience,” said Minhaj Zia, Director, Collaboration Sales, Cisco India and SAARC.
Mobile video conferencing: any takers
Though mobile video conferencing has been around for quite a while, the trend is yet to pick up. “Though it is yet to see any traction, however, organizations are looking to invest in mobile video conferencing. The availability of bandwidth so far was the biggest challenge but with the rollout of 4G by a leading telco, which will soon be followed by other service providers, it is expected that the technology will get the required boost,” said Vinod Nair, Director, Marketing, AGC Networks. He added that traction would come from micro-verticals such as manufacturing where the technology would emerge as a successful means of communication as monitoring quality would become that much easier.
It is expected that mobile video conferencing when launched will be available in two formats: as an IP application and as a mobile-to-mobile video call through a H.264M (mobile gateway).
Basically, for the trend to pick up, the traction has to come from service providers who are currently believed to be in a dilemma with regard to business models. Although software for both smartphones and tablets is available, service providers are yet to find a business model around the rates for mobile video conferencing, as it is widely believed that rates cannot be the same as that of normal video conferencing. Nor can they be too low as this would affect the uptake of conventional PC-based or dedicated room-based video conferencing services.
Another reason as to why mobile video conferencing has not picked up is because of the user experience. Video calls over smartphones do not offer a good experience due to jerky video, extraneous noise and uncontrollable lighting. It may be a while before some of these issues are rectified.
According to Kaur of Frost & Sullivan, “Mobile video conferencing will only emerge top down in any enterprise. Also, large enterprises are expected to be the sole adopters for some time, as this would entail a substantial investment and ongoing expenditure on any organization.”
Sector-wise take up
Enterprises are moving from legacy ISDN to managed IP. Customers on public IP are realizing the security risks and are migrating to managed IP networks for video conferencing. Companies that hitherto had video conferencing on the LAN within the organization are investigating their chances of being able to connect seamlessly to everybody anywhere, irrespective of device form factors and networks. Cisco and Polycom are promoting B2B exchange networks such as Telepresence Exchange Network (TEN) and Open Visual Collaboration Consortium (OVCC) to overcome the issue of islands of communications coming into existence.
“Manufacturing is one area where there is a lot of traction and that is because monitoring can be done easily and quality can be kept in check here. Education is another segment where the number of people seeking these services is huge and the ability to use video to deliver the best possible instruction to the largest number of students is driving growth in this sector. In fact, we expect education to be a significant market for India,” said Belur of LifeSize.
Ruchir Godura, VP – South India & Asia, Vidyo, felt that the market for video conferencing would not only be driven by enterprises but also by individuals. According to him, “The Indian video conferencing industry is still in early days. Our estimates say that the market is roughly around $90 million a year and we believe that it will grow strongly. By 2015, there will 70-80 million users of streaming video everyday and, if 10% of these users are from the enterprise, it will make for a huge market.”
Video conferencing is slowly replacing face-to-face meetings and it is also becoming the next best thing to a physical meeting. Enterprises are using video conferencing to recruit, induct, train, roll out products and processes and to conduct market research, reviews, meetings and town halls.
Video conferencing has helped pharmaceutical companies roll out new products to doctors across a hundred cities in India. Tele-surgeries demonstrate and popularize the awareness of cutting-edge procedures across the country.
“Earlier, there was a constant bottleneck in bandwidth. With the evolution of technology, prices have comes down. As a result, people are now using video much more than they used to. Employees across sectors are demanding the right to use video conferencing as a preferred communication medium. The demand in enterprises is coming from the bottom up,” said Godura of Vidyo.
Streaming ahead
Unlike voice, video has largely evolved over the course of the last decade and is continues to evolve. Challenges include managing new and different codecs (like SVC) and the plethora of endpoint devices that includes smartphones, tablets, desktop units, PCs or laptops and more. Integration challenges are also becoming quite complex. According to experts, ensuring seamless connectivity and a high quality user experience across various networks is the primary challenge that enterprises face today. Hardware management is also becoming more complex with different endpoints on multiple networks.
All of these challenges result in a lot of dissonance in using video conferencing unless it is managed through a service.
“Video conferencing is continuously evolving in terms of improved quality and experience over lower bandwidth. Telepresence (TP) is one such trend. Other futuristic trends that are expected to evolve are 3D TP or holographic TP. At the lower end of the spectrum, companies like Blue Jeans and Vidtel are integrating free Web-based unmanaged video chat applications such as Skype and Google Talk with enterprise-class video conferencing on a Cloud model,” said Quinlan of Tata Communications.
Telepresence delivers an immersive, life-like experience. It will continue to cater to a niche, high-end, top-of-the line segment of the market mostly in boardrooms.Since the CAPEX and OPEX incurred on telepresence makes it difficult to justify it purely on RoI terms, the technology is best used for international videoconferences that account for no less than six hours a day.
“Given the current environment, enterprises have curbed large investments on telepresence. Sales have dropped 38% over last year. However, it has set a high benchmark for the video conferencing experience, increased the awareness of video conferencing as an alternative or the next best thing to travel,” said Nair of AGC Networks.
