Copyright © 2012 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
April 28, 2012
By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View/ UC
Strategies Expert
Meetings and real-time conferencing
have always been very demanding because it requires all participants to be
available at the same time and/or the same place. Starting back in the old days
of face-to-face meetings in the same room to exploiting voice and video
conferencing for distributed participants, there is still a need to synchronize
access to information and personal availability to join a live conference.
The primary benefit of conferencing is
that it allows the participants to question and discuss issues with others in
real-time, thus shortening the time to get issues understood and resolved. In
effect, conferencing is the “heart of collaboration,” even though asynchronous
forms of communication are also very important ways to collaborate and exchange
information. “Unified communications” (UC) has been evolving to allow end users
to selectively use any form of contact with others in order to collaborate
easily and cost efficiently.
While voice conferencing has always
dominated the real-time conferencing world, video conferencing technology has
improved sufficiently to enable it to be a new UC-enabled option for
organizations to exploit instead of face-to-face meetings that require expensive
travel for remotely located participants. Not only has video conferencing
become practical for traditional room-based groups, but has now also moved into
the domain of individual end-user participation from their desktops or from
their personalized, mobile tablets and smartphones. In effect, video
conferencing has joined voice conferencing, or, like “unified messaging,” I
would describe as “unified conferencing.”
“Different Strokes For Different Folks!”
The basic value of UC integrations is that it can
flexibly accommodate individual end user needs for multi-modal communication
applications on a device-independent basis. UC flexibility provided limited
benefits to users at the desktop, where a PC and telephone were separately
accessible, but the dynamic demands of mobile environments made such
flexibility more critical. Now, with the rapid adoption by consumers of
multi-modal smartphones and tablets, the vision of UC enabled business
processes can be realized. When end users have to communicate in real-time,
whether person-to-person or in groups, they have easier and dynamic access to
their choices of interaction and participation.
Such flexibility is of particular value when
conferencing requirements are “ad hoc” and time sensitive. The faster and
easier for individual end users to participate in any real-time discussion, the
greater the operational benefits to business process performance. As I pointed
out recently,
conferencing modalities no longer have to be confined to separate desktop silos
for all participants, but can now be exploited selectively by individual users
as their roles require.
Adding Video Conferencing to the Business Collaboration Menu
Although video has become well accepted for both
information and personal communications through You Tube and other web-based
applications, a recent survey
shows a number of challenges still facing business user adoption of video
conferencing. Inasmuch as voice conferencing is well accepted, easily managed,
and cost effective, it already provides basic real-time conferencing
capabilities for participants.
Aside from implementation complexities, higher costs,
and questionable benefits of video conferencing, the biggest resistance from
end users is the lack of a real need for it in doing their jobs. Voice
conferencing has been readily available for both desktop and mobile users, and
has apparently been adequate for most real-time conferencing needs. While video
conferencing was limited to room-based set-ups, it did not provide the
convenience that voice conferencing allowed. Although desktop video
conferencing was an improvement, it did not allow maximum participation from
mobile users. With Mobile UC–enabled video conferencing, it is now time to
exploit video in a variety of ways, including ad hoc conferencing.
Like everything else, new business communications
have to satisfy individual end user needs and their job roles. In many cases,
the end users are in an audience watching a speaker presentation; in other
cases, the end user may be being interviewed while others watch. For group
interactions, participating in a real-time videoconference should be a matter
of choice to be “on camera” or not, depending on the individual end user’s
role.
With such UC-enabled flexibility, it will become
easier to maximize the real-time involvement all key personnel, especially when
they are mobile and outside of the organization (e.g., business partners,
customers, consultants). This, in turn,
will speed up any business process that requires group discussion and
interactions.
This post sponsored
by the CIO Collaboration
Network
.
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