By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View/ UC Strategies
Expert
If “a picture
is worth a thousand words (spoken or written),” what’s a video worth? That’s a
good question now, because desktop PCs and smartphones can add video exchanges
and videoconferencing to other unified communication (UC) options. The answer,
of couse, depends on the individual end user’s communication needs of the
moment, but making such capability a simple “click” to switch to video is a bit
more complicated than voice conferencing.
Business
communications are moving beyond wired messaging and voice calls to wireless
Internet connections with mobile devices that support visual, audio, and video
user interfaces. The rapid consumer adoption of mobile smartphones and tablets
is dramatically expanding legacy forms of business communications to multimodal
unified communications (UC). With more personalized choices in mobile devices,
often described as “BYOD” (Bring Your Own Device), the power of desktop
computers and telephones has been extended to mobile consumers for accessing
information, performing self-service transactions, and being able to flexibly
communicate with people and interact with online applications on a personalized
basis.
What this
really means is that such flexible business communications have to be available
selectively, but consistently, to all types of end users, whether within an
organization (employees), or outside an organization (business partners,
customers). As both communications and business process applications move from
premise-based hardware and software to Internet-based public, private, and
hybrid clouds, UC-enabled interactions can now be offered more easily and
cost-efficiently as hosted/managed services, also known as Unified
Communicaitons as a Service (UCaaS). While telephony system providers are
trying to migrate their legacy voice technologies to cloud services and
integrate with IM platforms such as Microsoft Lync, they are also trying to add
video options as well. By its very nature, video is more complex than just
voice, and making it simple for end users as part of a UCaaS offering is a
challenge for legacy telephony service providers.
Different video strokes for different folks!
At the
individual end user level, business communication needs will vary with the
roles that an end user plays in a business process. Such use case requirements
will be different for vertical markets, as well as the BYOD choices of
individual users. Providing such flexibility, especially for users outside of
an organization, can best be done in a hosted/managed service environment,
where the service provider has the tools and expertise to manage and change the
spectrum of communication options that are required by different classes of end
users.
Such
flexibility has been extended to include video conferencing interactions, where
people may be “on” or “off” camera, but can still be connected in real time for
voice conversation, while exchanging any form of visual information related to
the discussion. The big breakthrough, then, is that people can now dynamically
and flexibly communicate and exchange information with others any time, from
anywhere, and in any mode that is appropriate to the involved end users.
So,
when it comes to implementing the power of both video and UC to existing
business communications, a UCaaS provider with solid video experience is a practical resource available to any size
organization. One of these vendors is Yorktel, which notes, “Once called the
video industry’s best kept secret, Yorktel is best known for making complicated
simple.” As a vendor agnostic video provider, Yorktel works with industry
leaders including Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, and Vidyo. While not as well known
as some of the larger video vendors, Yorktel’s customers include Fortune 500m
and federal agencies. The importance of having a UCaaS provider with a solid
foundation in video was reinforced in Yorktel’s announcement
at Enterprise Connect 2014 regarding their VideoCloud service. VideoCloud integrates
with enterprise platforms like Microsoft Lync for specific vertical market use
cases that need video, such as the booming telehealth industry, and integrates
with specialized video endpoint devices like iRobot for manufacturing, and VideoKiosk for a variety
of government, retail, and banking vertical markets.
Video conferencing for meeting rooms, desktops, and, now,
mobile devices
While UC has
been talked about for a long time in conjunction with real-time voice telephony
for voice conferencing, video conferencing capabilities have been extended from
traditional room based systems, to desktop PCs, but, most importantly, to
individual end users with mobile smartphones and tablets. This opens the door
to satisfying the need for traditional face-to-face meetings with more
cost-effective, conferencing options that go beyond just voice, thus minimizing
the time delays and costs of traveling to a meeting.
Adding video
conferencing to the list of UC-enabled capabilities of any multimodal device
means that users can simply “click-to-video conference” contextually in their
preferred mode of being “on” or “off” camera. Connecting via the Internet,
e.g., using WebRTC, increases ease of use as well as lowered connectivity
costs. However, things are not that easy to implement, and the complexity of
communications technology to selectively integrate and exploit video as a
service when needed, has to be simplified for real world use. That’s where
Yoktel’s experience comes into play to help customers extend existing
communications to include flexible use of video.
UC-enabling
video conferencing capabilities allows end users to start from simple messaging
contacts to IM to voice connections to video connections from a common user
interface.
Video conferencing at the infrastructure level
While making
things simple for end users is most important when it comes to increasing
adoption, there is unfortunately a need to ensure that infrastructure
integrations are taken care of.
There are
various factors affecting the use of video that add to integration requrements,
including:
·
Video conferencing requires both voice and selective use of
video to show visual information, i.e., “on camera” options for conferencing
participants, and particpant connectivity with different endpoint devices
·
Video connections have no standard codecs access
·
Integration of video conferencing with online business
process applications requires APIs for “click-to-videoconference” option to be
embedded within the applications
·
Video output will have to accommodate different user
endpoint devices that hav different size screens and different operating
systems
·
Video content display may require authorization at the
individual participation level
·
Video conferences require management controls scheduling,
invitations, notifications, who is on or off camera, who can speak and when,
etc.
·
Video content that will be dynamically presented during the
video discussion must be easily generated and accessible as an option to
authorized participants
Yorktel prides
itself on its years of experience in handling such requirements and simplifying
customized usage for different types of end user applications. As the business
communications market increasingly moves towards a combination of BYOD devices,
unified communications, and cloud based business applications, Yorktel is
prepared to assist different vertical market customers of any size through this
evolution.
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