28 Apr 2010
When news of the volcano blowing its top in Iceland reached the PR world, it was quick to suggest how the resulting travel disruption had caused businesses to immediately splurge their budgets on videoconferencing solutions. Just hours after the ash started falling, a PR woman called me to say that videoconferencing providers were experiencing an eruption of new orders. This was an important story, she insisted.
I decided not to follow up this red-hot lead because it is a story I have written many times before. Any event that causes wide-scale travel disruption prompts a similar reaction from the marketing departments of videoconferencing providers. Computing knows to expect a flurry of calls whenever a public transport strike occurs, snow hits, swine flu breaks out or indeed a volcano erupts.
Of course, the benefits of videoconferencing solutions in these emergency situations are obvious, so why wouldn’t the recent travel chaos cause a spike in sales?
Cisco Systems, one of the largest makers of teleconferencing equipment, said the volcano had caused a boost in demand, although it admitted its only evidence was anecdotal.
Meanwhile, Brightcom and Coms Plc, also equipment manufacturers, said they had seen a jump in service usage.
Not to be outdone, videoconference application provider First Connections decided the crisis provided a golden opportunity to drum up new business so began offering firms a free four-week trial of its Vidyo-based personal telepresence service.
But what does this eagerness on the part of vendors to exploit a natural disaster say about the state of the videoconferencing market? To me, it suggests that most organisations are still not sold on the whole concept.
The sad fact is that it still takes a total transport meltdown for most businesses to even consider adopting videoconferencing. The argument that the technology can help organisations cut travel and office building expenses, and reduce their carbon emissions appears to carry little weight. So when the ash finally settles it looks like it’s going to be business as usual for the airlines.
A very interesting article. At times, video conferencing vendors can be quick to jump on the bandwagon when a disruption in travel, particularly air travel, occurs.
I'm a representative from BrightCom and we have been following the Volcano/Telepresence/Video Conferencing news very closely. I'd like to make it clear that in our press release we did not state that our services increased due to the number of cancelled flights and stranded travellers. Many telepresence and video conferencing vendors did make that claim. Our press referenced the increase in services by Regus, the virtual office provider. Their amount of requests for offices/services were claimed to increase within that amount of time.
Our main point, however, was that telepresence and video conferencing systems can be a long-term solution for businesses to prevent delays in productivity due to events that disrupt business travel and face to face meetings. These events are inevitable, but this technology, whether it is connecting through Skype, a BrightCom online integrated video and data conference or a Cisco Telepresence Suite or all three, is an instant and productive answer.
Here is our press release link: http://news.brightcom.com/?p=609.
Posted by: Victoria Sauer 05 May 2010
Great article, at last a journalist with her feet firmly on the ground addressing the video hype. I take a similar controversial perspective with regard to video communications these days, after spending years of my life as a video evangelist.
When you look at all the data over the past 20 years there has clearly been a very rapid increase in the use of collaboration technologies all round, supported by the Internet, mobile phones and all the advances in computing power. However video remains as it has always been - a very small part of the overall market, and the size of the equipment supply business has not changed very much.
The collaboration market overall has grown rapidly but the main growth areas have in fact been more use of the plain old telephone coupled with sharing information over the web via a web conference, with video remaining a niche.
I concluded 10 years ago that demand for video conferencing was not based on technology or quality issues, it was just regarded as an optional extra, we can do business without it. But we can't do without the audio and the sharing and discussing of documents.
Most of us are on the move these days so we increasingly use our mobiles to join audio conference calls. It was always a fallacy that we would be sitting at Reading railway station trying to make a video call from our 3G mobile phone..... let's see, when did that much heralded solution ever get used?
So like you I am now a video sceptic, the quality of today's telepresence systems is truly awesome. It's a perfect experience, but I would argue that collaboration is done on all levels and you can do most of what you need to do with the plain old telephone and a browser or the new iPad.
The market stats show this all too clearly. I speak of course from a company focused on just audio and web collaboration, which we opted for because we understood that's where the real volume market is. We too saw massive traffic increases with the ash cloud, as we did during the snow days and the strike days, all these events educate users that there are alternatives and in our experience they start to use those alternatives more and more.
Posted by: Tim Duffy, CEO, MeetingZone 30 Apr 2010
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