BroadSoft, the leading provider of hosted PBX platform, VoIP services and unified communications solutions is now supporting video communication solutions from the leading video communications vendors – Tandberg, Polycom and LifeSize.
As SMBs become more distributed and globalized, efficient communications and collaboration are becoming increasingly difficult with utilizing only applications like e-mail and audio conferencing solutions. These companies are turning to affordable web and video conferencing solutions to resolve and optimize the above issues.
In the current difficult economic environments and with increasing travel expenses (both domestic and international) and time commitment required, the new affordable and easy-to-use hosted video conferencing systems that may be conference room or desktop based, the reduction in travel costs is providing rapid ROI and savings in travel time providing increased employee productivity – leading to increased adoption even among SMBs globally. In addition, as SMBs become more environmentally aware and responsible, these solutions help support the need to reduce carbon emissions and provide support for ‘green’ initiatives.
In my discussions with several small and mid-market SMBs in the last several weeks, an increasing percentage of the SMB and mid-market enterprises distributed over several locations, are now seriously considering video conferencing solutions. Some of the larger financial and private venture companies are looking at 3 Tier solutions. The top Tier of Telepresence solution at corporate locations to communicate with key accounts for executive management, Tier 2 small conference room solutions for teams/workgroup meetings and training sessions, Tier 3 of personal integrated or desktop system for more regular 1:1 communication sessions. As the adoption of “presence” becomes more prevalent for IP devices and unified communications, integration of video communications into presence engines will further increase interest and adoption; new video conferencing solutions are based on standards and allow easy integration with other audio visual systems at partner and customer sites.
The ability to use standard web browsers with hosted solutions, off-the-shelf web cameras, and existing network infrastructure has accelerated the popularity and growth of web-based video conferencing market and has helped to drive its adoption into new industries and applications. As video communication solutions now support reservationless On-demand conferencing, they let employees hold impromptu meeting, without pre-scheduling these meetings – allowing them to collaborate when they need to, with whomever they need to, provided both parties have access to video conferencing systems.
Vendors are recognizing the market opportunity and value of video conferencing solutions for the SMB market and are making available systems that are affordable and easy-to-install/ use/manage because SMBs typically don’t have the IT staff to support these solutions. In some instances these solutions can be managed remotely by VARs and service providers. However, they are still a ways away from a price that will explode mainstream adoption in the global SMB markets.
Key Drivers for Video Conferencing Solutions in the SMB Market:
- Availability of affordable HD/SD Video Conferencing Systems, both web and on-premise based Video Conferencing solutions
- Support for Unified Communications
supporting integration of video with UC desktop and smartphone applications
- Support for end-to-end video solutions
- Increasing employee productivity and enhancing organizational efficiency
- Better and more interactive real-time communication and collaboration between employees
- Need to interconnect distributed branch offices (within country and international locations), better interaction with outsourcing partners
- Enhance the ability of distributed workforce to communicate and collaborate among themselves, and with customers/ partners
- Save travel costs and meeting expenses
- Ability to utilize off-the-shelf video cameras and headsets
- Increased bandwidth availability and lower cost of high bandwidth connectivity
- Increased adoption of rich media communications – video
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Scaling knowledge by making domain experts more accessible and productive
Applications/Markets — Horizontally across all mid-market companies’ sales, marketing, training (for distributed employees, partners, and customers), recruitment, and product development are the key application segments. Vertical industries including financial services, professional services, technology, manufacturing, healthcare, oil and gas, law, entertainment and education are among the top adopters of video conferencing solutions. New applications for video conferencing are being launched with greater frequency as deployment increases; increases in travel costs are prompting SMBs to interview potential employees as this allows one to interact virtually face-to-face.