Is Video Finally Ready For Prime Time? · the World’s Fair. In that intervening time it has become, well, less than ubiquitous. Over those 40+ years, videoconferencing rooms gradually

56 BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW / DEC 2007

Bandwidth-hungry videoconferencing may finally be ready. What’s on the programguide for the next few years?

V ideoconferencing has had, at best, acheckered history. Almost half a centuryhas passed since it was introduced byAT&T as the “PicturePhone” in 1964 at

the World’s Fair. In that intervening time it hasbecome, well, less than ubiquitous.

Over those 40+ years, videoconferencingrooms gradually came to be deployed by manyenterprises attracted by the promise of travel costreductions. However, in the simple equation ofvalue divided by hassle, videoconferencing failedin both the numerator and denominator: Viewing agrainy image at some distance failed on the valueside, since low-resolution images did not provideany compelling communication, collaboration ortrust-building benefit over audio conferencing.And driving to a special room to use equipmentthat needed a live on-site technical support staff toset up video calls and overcome connectivityissues was hardly the model of convenience.

Today, however, videoconferencing hasentered a revolutionary period. Systems from ven-dors such as Cisco, Polycom, LifeSize and Tand-berg, and services from providers such as AT&Tthat leverage these systems into end-to-end ser-vices are redefining the nature of videoconferenc-ing, creating an immersive experience that sus-tains the illusion that all participants are physical-ly collocated. Specific technologies, such as spa-tial audio, where sound emanates from the on-screen location of the speaker instead of an indef-inite location, help preserve that experience.

Early results are showing extremely high uti-lization, and, although these so-called “telepres-ence” systems and services are not inexpensive,payback can be extremely rapid, in terms of quan-tifiable travel cost reduction. But even more than acost reduction play, these immersive telepresence

systems are becoming strategic: helping to driverevenue growth, build and support customer rela-tionships, streamline today’s globalized and virtu-alized enterprises, accelerate decision-making,enhance collaboration, improve engineeringdesigns and facilitate mergers and acquisitions.

There are a number of key considerations inselecting among various vendor and providersolutions—for example, features, total cost,usability and network concerns. In this article wewill detail some of these considerations. In addi-tion, we will predict how these services are likelyto evolve over the next few years.

Perhaps more than any other service, immer-sive videoconferencing requires the highest quali-ty endpoints and the highest performance net-work. A total solution also requires other elementssuch as installation, video concierge, maintenanceand support services, but endpoints and the net-work are the most important building blocks.

Drivers And EnablersSeveral forces are driving the accelerated interestin and adoption of immersive videoconferencingsolutions. On the enabling side, essential tech-nologies and services are now here. These includethe rapidly declining prices of flat screen plasmaand LCD displays, high-definition (HD) cameras,and processing components in codecs andbridges. Enterprise technologies used to trickledown to the consumer segment; now, the tableshave been turned, with high quality, affordableconsumer flat-screen HDTVs and video camerasdriving expectations for the enterprise segment.

Second, converged network services such asAT&T’s global MPLS services have the reach,performance, quality, price points and cost effec-tiveness, through multiuse convergence with qual-ity of service enabled by differentiated classes ofservice, to enable connections of these endpoints.Ancillary services that complete the ecosystem,such as video concierge, certification, installationand support, are also becoming available, typical-ly bundled in as part of an entire solution.

A number of drivers are also pulling theseenablers into use. One, no doubt, is the “coolness”factor. Many sales have been closed on sheer curb

Joe Weinman isresponsible for emerging services andbusiness developmentfor a large globaltelecommunicationsservice provider. Hehas a BS and MS inComputer Sciencefrom Cornell University and UW-Madison respectively,and has completedExecutive Education atthe International Institute for Manage-ment Development inLausanne. He hasbeen awarded 10 U.S.and internationalpatents, and is a frequent industryspeaker globally onstrategy and emergingtechnologies. Theviews expressed arehis own. He can bereached at [email protected].

Is Video Finally Ready For Prime Time?Joe Weinman

BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW / DEC 2007 57

appeal of the solution. All it takes is one demo forsenior executives to want one for their office suite.

But there is much more than glamour atwork—there is also a compelling fit with manyenterprise initiatives and mandates. For example,businesses are increasingly global: customers maybe global, whether the product is soft drinks, cof-fee, fast food or automobiles and jet planes. Sup-pliers may be global, whether for engineering ser-vices or manufacturing. Or tasks may be out-sourced to global providers, whether call centers,legal services or software development. Global-ization is a double-edged sword, because increas-ing numbers of participants in markets also drivesaccelerated hyper-competition. This in turn is dri-ving a requirement for enhanced collaboration andinteraction—with customers, suppliers and part-ners that may be located virtually anywhere—toaccelerate decision-making and drive collabora-tive results in Internet time. And, in the face ofthis, CIOs are being asked to cut capital expendi-tures and operating expenses while delivering thesame or enhanced results and service levels.

Into this mix, immersive videoconferencinghas the appeal of increasing global collaborationwhile reducing costs.

Consider a typical high-end room, let’s assume

it is $300,000. This is the list price of some com-plete rooms on the market, including screens,cameras, codecs, even furniture. Some rooms willgo into existing space, and, of course, one couldconstruct new or renovate at additional location-and contractor-dependent charges. If we assume afive-year life and zero residual, that works out toabout $5,000 a month in straight-line deprecia-tion. One can add to that a few thousand dollars innetwork services. Allocating an exact amount forconnectivity depends partly on the location fordeployment, and also whether one is getting thepricing benefit of converged network services.

For example, if only a third of the bandwidth ofan access link is being used, it would be proper toallocate one-third of its cost to the videoconfer-encing application—but only if the other two-thirds of the bandwidth is being used for otherapplications. But let’s assume a worst case wherethe line is dedicated, and add in some otherexpenses like real estate, cost of capital, amortizedone-time installation costs, power for lighting,maintenance and so forth. That might work out to$12,000 to $15,000 per room per month, or$24,000 to $30,000 per pair of rooms.

That may sound expensive, but consider thecosts being avoided. For one person to go on a trip

Avoiding a singleround-trip flightfrom New York to Hong Kongcould save$15,000

In

Audio,graphics,documents,white boards,etc.

Out

Image capture

Coding and stream consolidation/synchronization

Private line or converged network

Decoding and stream separation

FIGURE 1 Sample Telepresence Meeting


from New York to Hong Kong business classmight cost, in itself $12,000 to $15,000—just forairfare! That does not include other hard costs,such as hotel room, limos, rental cars and meals.But add in other easily quantified costs, such aspro rata loaded salary for the individual, then con-sider other qualitative costs such as loss of pro-ductivity—packing and unpacking, waiting in thesecurity line, on the plane or as they try to recov-er from jet lag—and increased risk, whether dueto terrorism or avian flu. And this is for one indi-vidual: Multiply whatever number you calculateby the number of participants.

And that’s just for a single meeting. In fact, twotelepresence endpoints can be used for hundredsof meetings each month: 440-hour weeks equates to160 one-hour meetings,but actually, meetingrooms in practice turn outto be used not just 9 to 5,but also in early morningsand after hours, especiallyfor global meetings.

And even if travel sav-ings were ignored, thereare many additional bene-fits, including accelerateddecision-making, enhanced collaboration,improved work results, employee/family satisfac-tion, carbon reduction and so forth.

Endpoint Quality Is KeyAchieving these benefits was difficult with tradi-tional videoconferencing systems, because thesesystems couldn’t truly re-create the face-to-faceexperience, so in practice they tended not to beused as a substitute for corporate travel. Today’ssystems, however, are much more likely to createthe collaborative environment that can actuallyserve to replace face-to-face meetings. However,to achieve this requires the highest-quality end-points and the highest-quality network.

A system such as Cisco TelePresence is a greatexample. A fully configured room includes threescreens, each of which is a 65-inch diagonal plas-ma display with 1080p resolution. This providesenough width across the three screens to easilydisplay six people (two per screen) in life size. Ahigh-level schematic of the architecture to virtual-ly transport six people across distance is shown inFigure 1. (A real solution would take two suchhalf-duplex transmissions). Viewed from severalfeet away, across the narrow dimension of an ovalconference table, the resolution is so great that thepeople displayed on the plasma screens appear tobe there in the room. Subliminal factors, such asconsistent room colors, lighting, and the exactshape of the conference table have been engi-neered to preserve that illusion.

Some vendors, such as Cisco, use displays witha cinematic letterbox (16:9) format. These are par-

ticularly well suited to meetings where partici-pants are seated at conference tables, and humanperception has evolved to prefer horizontalpanoramas. Some vendors, such as Polycom, alsooffer multiscreen displays built out of more tradi-tional 4:3 aspect ratio displays. In this instance,the assembled screens provide a panorama, andthe additional screen height enables participantswho are standing or in multiple tiers of rows to beviewed as well.

Behind the scenes, cameras, codecs, and auxil-iary equipment such as microphones, speakers,voice over IP (VOIP) phones, and graphics dis-plays support multimedia viewing.

Network Performance IsEssentialStudies have shown thatdelays of less than 200 to250 milliseconds areessentially imperceptibleduring conversation.Delays longer than thatwould result in gaps in aninteractive conversation.Such gaps would createunnatural delays such as

are found in satellite-basedvideo reporting from overseas, where the anchorasks a question and the reporter appears to stareblankly at the viewing audience for a second ortwo before answering.

This short time budget is rapidly used up byfactors other than the network. At 30 frames persecond, it takes 33.3 milliseconds to capture aframe on the originating end, some time to encode(just how much time depends on the codec), andthen on the receiving end, some time to decode,and finally 33.3 milliseconds to display a frame.So 70 to 100 milliseconds, or roughly one half toone third of the time budget is consumed beforethe network even comes into play. The relativelysmall remaining time budget drives requirementsfor low-latency packet queuing and transmissionand therefore a high-performing class of service,as well as stringent jitter (variation in delay) con-straints, since jitter buffers must be kept verysmall or they will add to the latency.

Besides propagation delay in the network,other characteristics of video over IP transmissionare subtly different than voice over IP. The humanear, or more precisely, the human auditory cortexin the brain, has the ability to fill in many missingelements in a voice transmission. Consequently,voice over IP quality tends to be relatively robustagainst packet loss. Packet loss in video over IP,on the other hand, may create noticeable artifactson a screen. These may include freezes, pixilation,and other highly visible issues. And, since, likeaudio-conferencing, videoconferencing is a real-time service, packet retransmission is not useful,since the video frame will already have been dis-

Much of the delay budget is used up

before the network is even taken into

account


played to participants. Some forward error correc-tion is possible, but at the expense of increasedbandwidth requirements. Also, not all packets arealike: Those with key frame information can causemore noticeable artifacts when dropped. There-fore, packet loss requirements are fairly stringent,e.g., below 1 packet of every 2,000.

In other words, the goal of preserving a top-quality experience does not afford the network theluxury of congestion, lost packets or out-of-orderdelivery. And bandwidth requirements are not triv-ial. Depending on the vendor, resolution (standarddefinition, 720p; or 1080p), selection of inter-leaved or progressive scan, frame rate and colordepth, bandwidth requirements can be 1 Mbps,1.5 Mbps, 2 Mbps or 3.5Mbps, peaking up to 5Mbps—per screen! Amultiscreen system there-fore may need up to 15 to20 Mbps of bandwidth.

Network ArchitectureConsiderationsWhile one could do animmersive videoconfer-ence within a building, thevalue increases as other par-ticipants are across town, in another state, or, intoday’s global economy, intercontinental. In fact,the value is probably superlinear as a function ofdistance—the value from avoiding a 12,000 miletrip may be more than twice that of avoiding a6,000 mile trip, what with airline costs, jet lag,security issues, travel delays, overnight stayrequirements, etc.

Consequently, a balance is required betweenlonger separation distances creating more valuefor conference participants, but shorter distancesbeing better for network latency and cost.

One approach is to use dedicated private linesfor connecting videoconferencing rooms. Howev-er, this can be cost prohibitive. One vendor/serviceprovider that manufactures rooms as well as pro-viding video services, dedicates a DS3 to eachvideo endpoint. At any given point in video codecevolution, lower bandwidth requirements mayreduce network expenses, but at the expense ofvideo quality. If only 15 Mbps are used, though,that means that two thirds of the DS3, or evenmore of a 50-Mbps Metro Ethernet service arewasted.

Consequently, converged network servicesleveraging Multi-Protocol Label Switching(MPLS) services would appear to be ideal—aslong as they meet the stringent latency, jitter andpacket loss requirements.

AT&T has conducted extensive domestic andinternational testing—in the lab with simulatedlinks and traffic load injection, over live produc-tion networks, and with early international cus-tomer deployments. Results show that immersive

videoconferencing and MPLS are a perfect fit.The highest class of service, with guaranteed lowlatency queues, is perfect for voice over IP, with itssmaller packet sizes. A second class of service, formultiscreen HD video over IP, meets the stringentlatency and packet loss requirements. Third andlower classes of service can then be used, various-ly, for corporate applications, streaming video, filetransfer, etc. And a 45 Mbps or 50 Mbps accesspipe can then be fully utilized.

For example, 18 Mbps of voice over IP in CoS 1 can co-exist with 15 Mbps of video in CoS 2 and another 12 - 17 or so Mbps of lowerclasses of service traffic. The VOIP traffic doesnot cause issues for video, the video does not

interfere with VOIP, andlower priority serviceswith less stringent re-quirements should betransported just fine.However, the extremedemands that telepres-ence traffic can place onthe network mean that thecomplex interplay of dis-tances, traffic patterns,packet sizes, packet loss,

jitter and routing can some-times require network performance assessmentsand professional engineering.

EvolutionHow are immersive services evolving? In manydifferent dimensions:■ Point-to-Point ➞ Multi-point: The early sys-tems were point-to-point. In other words, only twolocations could talk to each other at a given time.All the major vendors have since come out withvariations for getting multiple endpoints to be ableto converse by leveraging privately-deployedpremises-based or service provider cloud-basedmultipoint conference bridges…now becomingeither 720p or 1080p capable.

In one variation, the site with the current ormost recent active speaker is displayed. In anoth-er, screens are switched between active speakers.In yet another, images are shrunk down—throughdigital processing or electro-mechanically recon-figurable cameras—to enable a greater number ofpeople to appear on each screen.

While two points can connect to each otheracross a “dumb” (but high performance andcapacity) network, efficiently connecting multipleendpoints requires a multipoint conference bridge.Such a bridge can handle the interconnectionswitching, but also will be called upon to provideadditional functions over time, such as transcod-ing, protocol conversion and trans-rating (forexample, from 30 frames per second to 10). Whilepoint-to-point solutions alone provided value,multipoint solutions greatly enhance flexibilityand expand the variety of usage scenarios.

Flexible bandwidth will be more economical

than dedicated lines


■ Private Line ➞ MPLS: Some early implemen-tations and some providers use dedicated privateline connections to connect their immersive video-conferencing rooms. However, as mentionedabove, MPLS services such as AT&T VPN(AVPN) offer many advantages, since MPLSoffers the opportunity to converge various types oftraffic, such as voice over IP, video over IP,HTTP/Web, and file transfer, while guaranteeingthe right quality of service for each type of traffic.This convergence, in turn enables sharing of band-width and other network resources, which reducesthe cost to carry the traffic.■ Intranet ➞ Extranet ➞ Internet: Initial solu-tions are architected for use within a company,either on a private line or MPLS VPN network. Ofcourse, users will want to converse not just withother employees of the same firm, but withemployees of other firms as well. This typicallyrequires an extranet architecture, using sessionborder controllers, as have become available froma variety of the video solution vendors, to secure-ly enable video, audio and presentation inter-changes across corporate VPN boundaries. (In analternate solution architecture, available from HP,the endpoint actually is a point of presence onHP’s network, so there is no extranet require-ment—every video room is on the HP VideoExchange Network (HVEN). This may simplifyinter-company communications, but potentiallynot be as interoperable or cost-effective as otherapproaches).

Ultimately, communications over the Internetmay be possible. In the short term, the challengewill be how to ensure that the quality of servicerequired by these solutions can be met by an opennetwork such as the Internet. Until QOS mecha-nisms are provided end-to-end, the high band-width and low latency required would be extreme-ly challenging, to say the least.■ Private Deployment ➞ Public Utility: Match-ing the evolution from Intranet to Extranet is theevolution of use cases and ultimately, provisioningof utility services. Although a common rule ofthumb is that 80 percent of enterprise phone callsare within a company, usage of high-end immer-sive video rooms is likely to increasingly be out-side the company. Consequently, usage scenarioswill be intra-enterprise and inter-company.Whether within or between companies, roomsmay not just be dedicated, but used like video pay-phones. The Regus Group has announced that itwill deploy 50 rooms based on Cisco TelePres-ence for customers to use, presumably paying bythe hour for calls.■ Intra-Provider ➞ Inter-Provider: Currently,two or more companies on the same serviceprovider network can connect and collaborate aslong as their networks are provisioned by that ser-vice provider. Clearly, though, interoperabilitymust not just be for heterogeneous devices fromdifferent vendors at different companies, but

extend to connecting across service provider net-works. Optimally, these solutions will take advan-tage of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) inter-car-rier peering enabled by session border controllers.■ Static ➞ Dynamic: Providing secure connec-tions across corporate and carrier boundaries cancurrently be done to a large extent, but onlythrough fixed connections. Being able to dynami-cally assign resources and connections, and billfor them, will be a challenging next step for theindustry.■ 3 Screen ➞ n Screens or No Screens: Currentsolutions have one to three screens. Like the evo-lution from single-blade razors to the Gillette TracII dual-blade and Mach3 triple-blade to theWilkinson Sword quadruple-blade Quattro to theGillette quintuple-blade Fusion razor, one cananticipate the same evolution in the video confer-encing space. One likely step is a true videoroom—including all walls and perhaps even theceiling and floor. A completely different approachmight be to replace screens with wearable video-glasses such as MyVu, enhanced with position-sensing technologies as developed for virtual real-ity. And eventually, direct electronic interfaces tothe visual cortex will eliminate the need forscreens. (Don’t laugh, systems such as the Dobelleartificial vision system do just this, although cur-rently at very low resolution). The visual process-ing capacity of the human brain represents thefinal limit for bandwidth required…after whichthere is no point in sending more visual informa-tion.■ 2D ➞ 3D: Current systems use 2-dimensionalimage capture and 2-dimensional displays. Onecan imagine how they will evolve to 3D over thecoming years. First, multiple cameras will captureand process multiple angles on the sending end.Second, three-dimensional displays will producean image on the receiving end. Autostereoscopicdisplays, that is, 3D displays that do not requirespecial glasses, are appearing on the market froma variety of start-up and established vendors. Andeven holographic displays, such as R2-D2 uses todisplay Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars may not bethat far off. Researchers have already demonstrat-ed small monochromatic holographic video dis-plays, and claim to be ready to build full-colorones.■ Homogeneous Vendor ➞ Vendor Interoper-ability: Some vendors initially produced systemsthat would only interoperate with other endpointsfrom the same vendor. However, everyone appearsto be moving now to standards-based interoper-ability, the key standard in this case being H.264,also known as MPEG-4. However, anyone withexperience in the network and IT industry knowsthat old standards seem to never die, they just loseshare asymptotically.■ Homogeneous Endpoint ➞ Endpoint Inter-operability: Even within a given vendor’s offer-ing portfolio, interoperability may not always be

Big screens aregreat, but users will also demandthe convenienceof portable video


possible. Some vendors originally had designgoals oriented towards preserving the experienceand illusion of being present in the same location.Blowing up a low-resolution cell phone imagecapture into a 65-inch 1080p display would notmeet that objective. However, it has become clearthat people want to communicate wherever andhowever they can. Consequently, vendors areexpanding their portfolios to provide a spectrumof solutions, from desktop to moderately large(25˝ to 45˝ diagonal) to immersive screens.■ Large Screen ➞ Small Screen ➞ GiantScreen: And even if systems are not availablefrom the same vendor, users will want interoper-ability with displays at both extremes of the spec-trum: Mobile and portable device screens on thelow end, which might have a 2˝ to 16˝ or 17˝diagonal, and 100˝ + diagonal LCD screens. LCDand plasma screens keep increasing in size asmanufacturing costs and yields are continuouslyimproved. Some current systems sometimes tradeoff the enhanced clarity of LCD or plasma screensfor a barely noticeable bevel surrounding thescreen, which can cause a seam where screens areabutted. Other vendors and users may prefer theseamlessness of rear-projection systems, but at thepossible expense of image crispness. Larger flat-panel screens mean fewer seams for a given areaof coverage. Even beyond that, digital cinemaprojectors on the high end are now being massproduced. It is only a matter of time before theybecome part of a solution. In fact, as digital cine-ma projectors become deployed in the 30,000 orso movie theaters in the U.S. and perhaps 100,000or more globally, it is only a matter of time beforethey start being used in theaters for group videoevents: not just live concert broadcasts, but newcommunities with two-way interaction. Rightnow, the only limit is access bandwidth to the-aters, but this is likely to change over the next fewyears as content companies look to fully networkand digitize their distribution into theater venuesusing not just satellite, but also low latency, ter-restrial wireline services.■ Planar ➞ Curvilinear: Organic Light Emit-ting Diodes displays (OLED) provide extremelythin panels which may be curved. These are nowbeing produced in prototype form even for theconsumer space, with production displays plannedfor the next 12–24 months by such vendors asSony. Although initial prototypes are relativelysmall (10˝ diagonal), it will probably be only 5 to10 years before one OLED screen can replace themultiple 65˝ plasma monitors with a single largecurved display.■ Transient ➞ Archived ➞ Streamable ➞Searchable: Videoconferences, like audio calls,have traditionally been viewed as transient,ephemeral events. However, archiving can com-plement a real-time video call by enabling laterplayback via streaming, use of VPN multicastfunctions, or a content delivery network. Then,

using either collaborative tagging, or automatedspeech-to-text engines and meta-data tagging andcontent-based information extraction, such as pro-vided by AT&T’s MIRACLE Video SearchEngine, enterprise search engines will be used tohandle requests like “find me the video call withAcme, Inc. where they committed to have the newModel 37 widget delivered to Sao Paulo by March1.”■ Fixed ➞ Portable ➞ Mobile: There are about3 billion cell phones in use on the planet. Rough-ly 100 million of the 250 million or so PCs soldeach year are mobile, and the percentage increas-es each year. A new category, ultra-mobile PCs,has the potential to catch on, providing all thefunctionality of a PC in a form factor approachinga PDA. Between cell phones, PDAs, ultra-mobilesand laptops, mobile access to videoconferencingthrough 3G network services provides a mix ofgreat convenience with good quality. And it isclear that convenience can trump quality in users’criteria: Consider the ubiquitous use of cellphones in general (which traditionally have nothad the call quality of fixed landline services) andcell phone cameras in particular (which have beenlower resolution than dedicated digital cameras).If the CEO of the company wants to participate inan immersive room-based videoconference fromhis or her cell phone, who is going to say no?■ Moderate Quality Mobile ➞ High QualityMobile: GSM (Global System for Mobile com-munications) is the de facto market leader formobility, available in 220 countries and territoriesand with more than 80 percent of the global mar-ket for mobile communications. In the U.S., thelargest mobile carrier, AT&T, leverages the stan-dard, with benefits ranging from seamless globalroaming to better customer price points for mobiledevices due to scale economies from handset ven-dors.

GSM is evolving, thanks to the work of theThird Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) andrelated industry standards bodies, to leverageWideband- Code Division Multiple Access(CDMA) through High-Speed Packet Access,with multi-megabit uplink and downlink speeds,and, by the year 2011, to “Long Term Evolution”,or LTE which will leverage Orthogonal Frequen-cy Division Multiplexing (OFDM) to providepeak uplink and downlink speeds of 100 Mbps ormore.

This means that shortly, there will not need tobe a tradeoff between convenience and quality:Wireless connectivity will provide more thanenough bandwidth to feed multiple high-defini-tion screens. Although a typical usage scenario isnot likely to be an executive in a taxicab with threeplasma screens on his or her lap, there are realapplications. For example, emergency mobileresponders may need to show a high definitionlive video from an accident scene to a specialistphysician in real time to make life-or-death deci-

Searchable videois also in the offing


sions. Polycom, for example, has such a solutionbuilt into a ruggedized box. Other applications,such as videoconferencing using a 3G+ wirelessnetwork from a hotel room, will increasinglybecome commonplace.■ Native ➞ Composited ➞Augmented Reality:Current solutions transport a faithful copy of thecaptured image to a remote end or conferencebridge. In fact, the accuracy and exactness of thecopy is a measure of the quality of the video trans-mission. However, a next step that may be pre-dicted is simple compositing, e.g., “green screen”or “chroma key” capture: Why have a boringbeige conference room wall behind you when dis-cussing new cover sheets for TPS reports, whenthe exciting and dramatic sheer cliffs of Kauai’sNa Pali coastline could be present? And, takingthis to the extreme, all kinds of compositing couldbe done, with digital information augmentingvideo images for war room and emergency opera-tions applications.■ Passive ➞ Interactive: Displays have tradi-tionally been one-way. However, interactive “dis-plays,” whether touch-screen or based on motioncapture in free space in front of the screen, arenow coming on the market, possibly leveraging ahandheld device. Popular examples are Apple’siPhone and iPod Touch, Nintendo’s Wii, andMicrosoft’s Surface. As videoconferencing dis-plays show not just captured talking-head video,but additional information, they will also be usedto enable interaction using touch and motion. Thiswill enable new paradigms in conferencing, col-laboration and interaction, with natural gesturesbeing used to interact with other individuals,three-dimensional data sets, and everything inbetween.■ Complex ➞ Usable & Convenient: Apple’siPod and iPhone, the TiVo user interface, Motoro-la’s first RAZR and similar contemporary designicons show the market advantage that simplicityand elegance in design can achieve. Since one ofthe issues with traditional videoconferencing hasbeen the complexity of initiating and sustaining aconnection, that has become a clear design goal oflatest generation solutions.

For example, Cisco TelePresence features fullintegration with Cisco Call Manager andMicrosoft Outlook. When a meeting is scheduledin Outlook and the TelePresence rooms are listedas resources, a (soft) one touch push-button optionwill appear on the in-room VOIP phone display tostart the call at the designated time. Or, if it’s an adhoc meeting, just dialing the phone number of theremote room in Cisco or Polycom solutions willcreate a connection, which at the touch of a buttonmorphs into a video connection. The interfacecouldn’t be much easier than that to use.■ Connection ➞ Collaboration ➞ Community:With Microsoft’s recent $240 million investment,Facebook’s valuation recently became a de facto$15 billion. Other Web 2.0 and social networking

sites from MySpace to Second Life are equallycreating a lot of interest in the venture capital andM&A community due to the absolute number ofusers, user growth, and the time these users spendon line.

Several observations can be drawn from this.First, these sites are not just for consumers, buthave entered the radar screens of enterprises, notjust for advertising, but also to experiment withenhanced employee and supply chain collabora-tion. Second, people are social creatures, andremain so in the on-line world. Third, as millenials(those coming of age as digital natives in the year2000 and later), who have grown up with high-speed Internet access, webcams, mobile phoneswith cameras and social networking sites enterand become an increasing proportion of the work-force, their desire to maintain community mem-bership and leverage enterprise video tools willconverge.

SummaryVideoconferencing rooms have had limited accep-tance and use in the past. However, today’s solu-tions, enabled by high-definition cameras and dis-plays, high performance codecs and multipointconference bridges, and latest-generation andemerging converged wireline and wireless globalnetwork services, are ushering in a dramatic accel-eration of adoption and use. Driven by fundamen-tal enterprise imperatives, such as cost reduction,virtual networked enterprises and globalization,video is now ready for prime time

Social networkingwill have a videoaspect for theenterprise

Companies Mentioned In This Article

Apple (www.apple.com)

Cisco (www.cisco.com)

Dobelle(www.seeingwithsound.com/dobelle)

Facebook (www.facebook.com)

Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com)

Lifesize (www.lifesize.com)

Microsoft (www.microsoft.com)

Motorola (www.motorola.com)

MySpace (www.myspace.com)

MyVu (www.myvu.com)

Nintendo (www.nintendo.com)

Polycom (www.polycom.com)

The Regus Group (www.regusgroup.com)

Second Life (www.secondlife.com)

Sony (www.sony.com)

Tandberg (www.tandberg.com)

Documents

Is Video Finally Ready For Prime Time? · the World’s Fair. In that intervening time it has become, well, less than ubiquitous. Over those 40+ years, videoconferencing rooms gradually