The business case for videoconferencing sounds compelling. Establishing a two-way video/voice link between, say, Sydney and Los Angeles for a business meeting is going to cost a lot less than flying someone there for a face-to-face meeting.
Indeed, the international or interstate business meeting had almost become one of the perks of office for senior executives. But the increasing costs of travel and increased frustrations caused by heightened security measures are making long distance business meetings less attractive.
Minter Ellison is a Melbourne-based law firm with offices interstate and in the US, UK, New Zealand, Hong Kong, China and Thailand. It uses videoconferencing for meetings between its staff and clients. The technology is also used for meetings of partners located in several different locations. Minter Ellison has almost 300 partners and more than 1200 lawyers.
Marc Boyd is the law firm's IT and Telecommunications Co-ordinator. He says one of the reasons for the slow uptake of videoconferencing (VC) has been the reluctance for someone inside an organisation to own the technology.
"Here we have more than 30 meeting rooms," he says. "I have the responsibility for making sure the VC technology works, but we have a business services group that organises the actual meetings.
"The technology is now very easy to use," Boyd says. "It's almost plug-and-play and that includes plugging laptops into the system."
Another plus for Minter Ellison was the embedded encryption used by its system. "Security is important for us, especially in meetings between partners and between lawyers and witnesses," Boyd adds.
Minter Ellison is using Tandberg VC technology over 2 Mbps links. This gives the firm to ability to connect several sites at up to 384 Kbps each.
Also in Victoria, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment is implementing a VC network covering 41 end-points in 26 sites across the state. It will be using its recently deployed IP network.
"Due to the sheer size of our region, it was counter-productive to travel in order to have face-to-face meetings," says Andrew Paynter, Project Manager for DNRE. "For a one hour meeting in Melbourne, some personnel who do not have access to airports would have to drive as much as six hours each way."
Videoconferencing will be part of the department's NREach-out project, which will connect more than 100 DNRE sites. Productivity improvements from the project have been estimated at up to $3.5 million a year.
DNRE's system is based on Cisco's AVVID technology (Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data). The department plans to digitally record relevant meetings for distribution to remote sites for on-demand viewing through the use of Cisco's content delivery network (CDN).
DNRE's approach of using a single network for data, voice and video is being used by an increasing number of government departments as part of the state government's Connecting Victoria strategy.
But the tyranny of distance still poses some problems for VC systems. In South Australia, the Department of Education is using VC technology for teacher training.
"(Remote) students became disenfranchised because the Internet was going very slowly, or was not going at all," says Gawain Duncan, a Technical Strategist with the department.
The department turned to local company, Foursticks, to supply a bandwidth optimising solution. The company uses technology it has developed including hierarchical credit-based queuing algorithms and policy-based configuration to set controls over which users get priority access to bandwidth.
"The Foursticks solution has enabled us to prioritise information and services so we have some guarantees that the quality of the content delivery is optimised," Duncan says. "In relation to learning services, we are able to take control of the bandwidth to enable audio and video conferencing over the WAN.
"At the administration level we are able to have sites link together and run our in-house administrative packages over the WAN and in both cases the outcome has been improved performance and naturally improved satisfaction," Duncan says.
While organisations like Minter Ellison and DNRE are reaping rewards from the new generation of VC technology, David Harwood, Sales Director, ACT Teleconferencing admits VC has not been a huge success in the past.
"There were so many breakpoints in the technology," he says. His company specialises in audio, visual and web-based conferencing systems. "There were disparate systems and technology failures," he says. "Equipment failed and ISDN links failed."
The first VC systems were also badly marketed. AT&T demonstrated the combination of voice and video in the 1950s and predicted a huge uptake for the technology.
The telco giant knew a lot about voice technology but little about video technology. AT&T's videophone system turned out to be a complete dud.
Approaching from the IT angle, Datapoint launched a combined computing and videoconferencing system in the mid-1980s. It was trialled by several commercial organisations and at least one federal government department, but was ultimately shelved.
Compounding the problem for VC systems was who to put in charge of the system. "Many organisations didn't know who to put in charge of the technology - there was no real owner," says Harwood. He adds that he has seen VC systems being entrusted to personal assistants and even catering providers.
"Some companies saw VC as simply replacing existing business meetings so they figured whoever kept the booking diary for the meeting room was in charge of videoconferencing," he says.
"Someone senior in the company needs to own the system and someone who understands the technology needs to manage it day to day."
Harwood sees a new application emerging for VC. For example, public companies are using the technology to extend the reach of AGMs to cover all capital cities - not just the home city of the company.
"It means they can reach a broader community of their shareholders than only those living in or near their home base," Harwood says.
ACT Teleconferencing manages the bridges and end points of VC networks. "We are picking up an increasing amount of business from companies that have tried VC but for one reason or another have not been able to do it successfully.
"The fact they are prepared to continue with the technology shows they have faith in its ultimate benefit."
With the ability to plug laptops into the network and share data as well as voice and video, Harwood says videoconferencing is developing into virtual conferencing. "The technology is making this so much easier," he says.
Indeed, the technology is reaching the point where videoconferencing is becoming an extension of mobile phone technology.
Leo Cortjens, Regional Vice President for Polycom, believes that by 2010 video will be incorporated into every IT device. "It will be just a part of the communications palette," he says.
Cortjens claims Polycom has about 60 per cent of the worldwide installed base of VC systems. Other major players include Tandberg, supplier of Minter Ellison's VC system.
"As far as managing VC systems in the future, the ultimate owner of the system will be the end user," Cortjens says. "Just as the end user is the owner of mobile phone technology."
Demonstrating the move in this direction was the launch locally of 'Vodafone live!'. Already available in several European markets, Vodafone live! extends mobile services to include colour images with words and sound accessible on a mobile handset with a built-in screen.
Grahame Maher, Managing Director of Vodafone Australia says the technology is aimed at individuals who want to extend the mobile experience.
"But you can see where this technology is heading," he says. "Mobile videoconferencing is just down the track. Imagine the application for on-the-spot video conference calls between, say, police at an accident scene and a command centre.
"It's just a matter of bandwidth," Maher adds. But communications managers would know all about that.
