At Cisco Live 2011 in Las Vegas – Dr. Guido Jouret, CTO, Vice President and General Manager of the Emerging Technologies Group discussed Cisco’s vision and opportunity for pervasive video conferencing in the business environment. He delved into the topic of pervasive video in the enterprise, taking a look at why video is happening now and how video is being utilised in everyday business…..

Why now?

Video conferencing accounts for more than 50 percent of Internet traffic at the moment and according to Cisco, this figure will reach 90% by 2015.

In developed countries, the economy is heavily services-led rather than manufacturing-led, and what tends to happen is that people use services that are ‘hyper-local’ because they can trust those services – they can see it for themselves. Well, video has the ability to bring services that people trust even closer to us: whether it be having a check-up from the doctor or talking to a bank manager – this can be done from the comfort of our own home or even our office!

Jouret highlights the transition of video as no longer being in ‘pilot-mode’ but being in the ‘scale-mode’. As the consumerization of IT continues to take place in companies across all different types of industries, whereby desktop landscapes are completely evolving and a ‘network centric approach’ without changing endpoints becomes more common, video is becoming accessible to everybody across all levels of the enterprise!

7 Ways to Use Video in the Enterprise

Business Meetings

The most common use of video traditionally, but now companies are expanding the deployment of video outside of the boardroom to the desktop, the home office and other remote locations across more geographies, which means more people can participate in meetings and make better and faster decisions.

Seminars & Events

Most large enterprises regularly host events; whether it be for customers, partners or colleagues. These events tend to be broadcast from one location with a range of speakers out to a large audience, such as the recent Cisco Live event 2011.

Security

Today, about 20% of surveillance is IP enabled and security departments are now more commonly looking at connecting security video devices to the network.

Training & Education

In certain industries, employee turnover is very high; for example banking companies lose 40% of staff each year. To bridge the knowledge gap, a growing number of enterprises are using video to train new staff without having to fly experts all over the world.

Mergers & Acquisitions

Increasingly, organisations who are performing well – despite the challenging economic situation – are taking the opportunity to buy other companies. Companies are going IPO, companies are changing their strategy, so in order to manage change, video conferencing is being deployed throughout organisations who are merging to ensure successful integration of mixed company cultures and values.

Advertising

Particularly common in retail and banking, digital signage allows companies to replace traditional forms of point-of-sale such as brochures and posters with digital content that is easier to update, can be tailored to the audience and can incorporate interactive elements.

Expert on Demand

We’re seeing this deployed particularly in services-led industries such as healthcare and banking. In banking for example, if you have a specific question about insurance, your advisor will put you in touch with an expert, but the expert is not in the branch; so they can be brought to you instantly with video.

There was a time when video conferencing was restricted for the confines with the boardroom. Companies invested significant sums of money to put in unreliable programs, allowing executives to converse to their counterparts in other boardrooms. This really is nevertheless the scene that lots of people visualise once they visualize video conferencing. However, which has modified lately, video clip conferencing has damaged out of the standard four walls it grew up in and also the results are certainly appealing.

Video conferencing hasn’t just broken from the boardroom; forward-looking enterprises are deriving true organization appeal and producing a whole new way of working; staff are taking their conversation anyplace; house workplace, espresso outlets and hotels to name only a few.

An interesting improvement has become the introduction of video communications to a lot more customer facing situations. Video Conferencing may help to link buyers to professionals regardless of international area. In certain retail financial institution branches, customers even now obtain the benefit of face-to-face interaction while the skilled understanding within the organisation can be delivered into a a lot larger viewers. By harnessing the facility of video communications, companies are understanding which they can even now produce substantial high quality individual solutions to buyers devoid of staying constrained by traditional geographic barriers.

An additional modern growth may be the products offering from Vpod. The company has created a powerful modular video booth that arrives pre-fitted using the latest high-quality video clip communication technology. It comprises a standalone integrated place made to meet the perfect environmental setting for any regular and managed video conferencing experience.

1 purpose why video conferencing is underutilised is down to companies not obtaining committed video clip meeting rooms. Rooms are sometimes heavily congested with colleagues getting collectively to conduct inner face-to-face conferences. The Vpod answer provides a consistent and uniform video clip conferencing facility, devoid of placing a burden on present meeting rooms.

It’s developments such as these that are driving the evolution of what video communications can provide to equally businesses and buyers. The technology is displaying its versatility by adapting to situations outdoors of the boardroom. This in turn demonstrates that video conferencing is really a communications tool that may enhance the customer experience, accelerate determination producing, streamline workflows and enhance productivity to nearly any dimension of company in any industry.

Here are four more industries who are imagining “outdoors the box”:

Judicial Procedure

From conducting consumer depositions to enabling remote witness testimonies, the justice system is applying video and web conferencing to minimize back on legal fees and shorten the lifecycle of trials. The prison system is benefiting from it’s use as perfectly by letting higher threat prisoners to look in court remotely, decreasing the doable safety hazards of transporting them. Other strategies the judicial system is making use of video conferencing include things like remote hearings and arraignments, as nicely as prisoners meeting with buddies and relatives members without having everyone acquiring to journey to the prison or jail to see them.

Production

Today’s society moves quick men and women want items now and never have the patience to wait. Video conferencing has authorized the Manufacturing Sector to cut down production time, in the long run resulting in lowering the time it will take for a products to get into the fingers of the public. This is produced possible by letting manufacturers to velocity up item suggestions, improve high quality handle and carry with each other teams of builders, designers and distributors, all situated in various regions during the globe..

Healthcare Providers

It applied to be widespread practice for doctors to make dwelling calls, but as society grew and technologies improved, it became typical for patients to pay a visit to doctors in their office. Video clip and net conferencing has permitted physicians to provide back again the dwelling get in touch with, earning their client visits extra personal. Physicians are now in a position to carry out medical related consultations, get advice from fellow physicians, keep track of clients and offer assistance to clients with out leaving the comfort of their business office. In addition, hospitals are making use of video clip and website conferencing to support coach potential physicians by enabling them to go online and observe surgeries as they are taking location.

Interpreting and Sign Language Support

Communication is a prominent issue going through people who are listening to impaired. Video and net conferencing has granted these men and women a instrument which makes it possible for communication obstacles to be damaged down. Interpreter solutions can now use video clip and internet conferencing to communicate with all those who are hearing impaired. This functions in particular nicely in a classroom setting the place interpreters act as an advocate for students, employees and dad and mom, giving equal accessibility to education for everybody.

As the reputation of video and website conferencing grows, extra and extra industries will start off to adopt this technology, generating it a “ought to have” necessity to executing enterprise.  Video conferencing is a technological innovation that will help lots of a Multinational Provider to thrive in spite of operating from distinctive practical bases at diverse poles of the planet. For these businesses, the technological know-how of video conferencing makes sure much better get to across the planet and advantages from multi-point customer interactions.