Despite advances in technology, compression algorithms and bandwidth, videoconferencing is still growing slowly. Forty percent of North American enterprises have no plans to adopt IP videoconferencing, according to Forrester Research. Only 29 percent have put a system in production. Most setups use room-based conferencing systems, where Polycom is king. Desktop and mobile devices don't garner as much interest. Desktop-based videoconferencing will be handled within Web conferences or mostly ignored. LifeSize Communications, and soon Polycom, will be pushing HD (High Definition) videoconferencing, but it won't take off until 2007 or later because of its increased bandwidth requirements.
We don't expect to see any surges in Webcasting or Web conferencing, but there should be moderate growth. Gartner forecasts 18 percent compounded growth in Web conferencing through 2009. Webcasting is comparable to a lecture, speech or one-directional medium, with a possible Q&A session. Online video content providers, such as pay-per-download TV shows and Web-only series, will warm consumers to Webcasts. Web conferencing is designed for collaborative, open communications meetings or presentations to small groups. WiredRed Software, for example, lets you display up to 12 simultaneous video feeds, share documents and whiteboard. WebEx Communications has the largest Web conferencing market share. Web conferencing will ultimately become an integrated part of IM. The collaboration features in IBM Lotus SameTime will give WebEx a run for its money, but this merging won't happen for a few years. Easy guest access is not yet available in any enterprise IM system. If you decide to host your own Web conferencing, you'll definitely get a few years out of it.
UM also has had a slow adoption rate. In our reader polls, we found 16 percent of respondents use UM. However, all respondents from organizations with more than 5,000 employees have implemented UM, so the low adoption rate may be deceiving. As organizations switch from TDM equipment to IP PBXs, UM adoption will follow. In a mixed environment, UM is more difficult to implement and maintain. The biggest benefit is in routing and responding to all avenues of contact now available to employees and customers through a single interface. E-mail, fax, Web forms, voicemail, IM and telephone calls are all frequently used, in some cases concurrently, for customer and employee contact points. Large conventional PBX vendors like Avaya and Siemens make systems that can transition you from an all-TDM environment to a mixed or all-IP phone network. Some customers who implemented IP telephony systems report that the smaller vendors such as Telephony@Work or Interactive Intelligence are more responsive to feature requests.
The types of customer contact is important in a call center. When a customer sends an e-mail, for example, he or she wants an immediate and personalized response. An IP contact center lets you route e-mail to a skilled call agent, who can respond to it during low telephone call periods. Also, if a user calls after receiving an unhelpful e-mail response, the agent can access the e-mail history. Being unable to correlate multiple contact points will put you at a disadvantage and may frustrate customers.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
