- The Human Productivity Lab
- Brockmann and Company
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Video conferencing had been relegated to the corners of the enterprise market for the past four decades, primarily as a communications service suitable for enthusiasts but not really ready for prime time. In recent years, that practice has changed dramatically. The introduction of HD cameras, codecs and low cost high speed networks defined an expectation for performance.
It was the introduction of telepresence that showed the power of quality and the need for a natural, elegant and immersive experience. Now that airlines are regularly failing - more than 25 in 2008 alone - and users have broken the 'must travel to meet' expectation, the technical, operational and cultural hurdles of enabling inter-company telepresence and video conferencing need to be understood and overcome. This handbook, the first of its kind, is a comprehensive overview of these issues and includes six industry best practices that will enable your organization to connect with customers, partners and suppliers while reducing the hard, soft and opportunity costs of doing business.
Key findings include:
(Webtorials registration required. Click here if you forgot your username/password.)
(Webtorials registration required. Click here if you forgot your username/password.)
Video conferencing had been relegated to the corners of the enterprise market for the past four decades, primarily as a communications service suitable for enthusiasts but not really ready for prime time. In recent years, that practice has changed dramatically. The introduction of HD cameras, codecs and low cost high speed networks defined an expectation for performance.
It was the introduction of telepresence that showed the power of quality and the need for a natural, elegant and immersive experience. Now that airlines are regularly failing - more than 25 in 2008 alone - and users have broken the 'must travel to meet' expectation, the technical, operational and cultural hurdles of enabling inter-company telepresence and video conferencing need to be understood and overcome. This handbook, the first of its kind, is a comprehensive overview of these issues and includes six industry best practices that will enable your organization to connect with customers, partners and suppliers while reducing the hard, soft and opportunity costs of doing business.
Key findings include:
- Economic, geopolitical and public health realities are driving the case for inter-company telepresence and effective visual collaboration as air travel becomes more costly and inefficient
- The higher quality end-user experience of telepresence coupled with capable tools for data collaboration are providing an acceptable alternative for many face-to-face meetings
- Telepresence equipment and network interoperability remains a major stumbling block towards widespread inter-company telepresence service adoption
- The need for quality video connections with partners, vendors and customers can be enabled through dedicated video overlay networks and telepresence and video conferencing exchanges which specialize in connecting disparate networks
- Security concerns will compel many companies to invest in premium services
- The cultural and operational issues around inter-company telepresence are as important to understand and address as the technical issues
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This is a fabulous resource! Many thanks to Howard Lichtman and Peter Brockmann for sharing this extensive guide.
The INTER-company focus is particularly important in that intra-company capabilities can be much simpler since they may very well all come for the same vendor. However, in this time of rapid mergers and acquisitions, many of the inter-company issues will rapidly become relevant intra-company if the two merged companies have chosen different suppliers.
I find it particularly useful in that it spans a wide range of issues from the fundamental business case to a rather detailed discussion of technical issues to Best Practices for implementation.
I also particularly like the tables that cross-reference interoperability of equipment from a range of vendors.