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It's good to talk: Low cost, direct-to-the-desktop videoconferencing is increasingly popular with a wide range of business types and sizes

Organisations seeking to cut costs are accelerating their adoption of videoconferencing technologies, according to vendors.
Kris Davies, managing director at Reading AV distributor Beyondis, said videoconferencing sales have grown 400 per cent by volume this year.

Also, he is seeing a huge shift from videoconferencing being a corporate and public sector opportunity to having appeal for SMEs.

A year ago, just 20 per cent of customers were SMEs, but now smaller companies make up about 60 per cent of Beyondis’ videoconferencing customer base, said Davies.

Money talks
Last year, the big driver in videoconferencing adoption was green issues, but cost-savings are becoming the most important factor.

“No one is talking green when they are trying to keep their jobs, but they are talking about saving money,” said Davies.
Smaller companies are getting real cost savings from deploying videoconferencing. And because small numbers of large deals are

giving way to larger numbers of small opportunities, more resellers are getting a look-in, he said.
“You no longer have to be in the FTSE 100 to afford the stuff,” he added.

The cost of kit is coming down as vendors such as LifeSize work to cap prices while delivering increased, even high-definition (HD), quality.

Videoconferencing links are being put in to save on domestic travel costs as well, said Davies. It used to be all about offices putting room-based links between London, New York and Hong Kong, but now they are just as likely to be connecting Slough, Birmingham and Manchester.

Increasingly, videoconferencing is being put in for low-cost, direct-to-the-desktop purposes, instead of into purpose-built rooms. Again, that has accelerated return-on-investment and lowered the barrier to adoption, said Davies.

Terry Dwyer, managing director of London managed network service provider Mvision, said another option for delivering cost-effective videoconferencing to all sizes of customer is providing it as a managed service.
The VAR has found that even large customers that can afford to invest in their own infrastructure often can do so without managing and supporting it themselves.

Savvy resellers with an armoury of service options can bundle the kit as a managed offering that provides recurring revenues.
The right packages are finding favour across many business types and sizes. “We package it to enable rapid delivery without any fuss,” he said. “And we are very interested in the SME space.”

Mvision uses videoconferencing by Tandberg for customers from SMEs to enterprise level. According to Dwyer, Tandberg gear is quick and easy to deploy, although it does take time for resellers to get up
to speed.

“Video will become mainstream. Integration to the desktop also is going to be very important in the next couple of years, so we are seeing good growth,” he said.
“Our business model is to double each year and we are on track to do above that this year, in profit terms.”

While videoconferencing deployment does require specific skills, many technical people in communications or IP have parallel training that can help them adapt swiftly to the emerging technology’s needs, said Dwyer.

“The skilling up is not very difficult and we run a comprehensive training system,” he said.

Going for growth
Wayne Stephens, vice president of EMEA partners and alliances at Tandberg, agreed the videoconferencing market is growing, with desktop deployments particularly strong.

“If firms deploy videoconferencing in rooms, they are finding that those rooms become very busy. And then they become frustrated because they cannot get in to do a simple video call because the room is always in use,” said Stephens.

This has the knock-on effect of encouraging organisation decision-makers to look into providing videoconferencing at desktop level. With the Microsoft development of an HD-ready webcam for PCs, that trend will only intensify, he said.

“But the largest growth happening right now is infrastructure,” he added.
Bob Leggio, vice president of the telepresence division at US-based telepresence provider Telanetix, said there are numerous opportunities for resellers. Telanetix provides videoconferencing kits that work out of the box or can be customised. It works with distributor Imago in the UK.

Resellers can wrap a whole portfolio of offerings around videoconferencing or telepresence kit, such as room furniture in different colours or styles to suit different locations and managed services or support, he said.

“In the US, we have 35,000 resellers leveraging this imaging technology and deploying it, because we make it simple to deploy,” Leggio claimed.