Extending Video Beyond The Firewall

UC

At last week’s Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion of video conferencing vendors and managed service providers on the topic extranet video conferencing. One of the frequent comments I hear in my discussions with those responsible for managing enterprise video conferencing deployments is dismay over the fact that after all these years, it’s still largely impossible to create a video call outside the organization as easily as a phone call.

During the session we discussed some of the key challenges including:
± Lack of a “PSTN” for video that would enable interconnectivity with identity between parties
± Lack of a way for service providers to monetize a video calling capability
± Need to interoperability between different standards and resolutions
± Concerns related to bandwidth availability
± Concerns related to performance management
± Lack of centralized calendars/scheduling or directories

Video conferencing vendors see interoperable extranet video conferencing as a key requirement to drive additional system sales, and as such, are starting to come together to address the above concerns. Witness Cisco’s recent introduction of its Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) and telepresence directory as a means of solving interoperability challenges and enabling system owners to find others to enable calls.

Service providers are also starting to come together to enable interconnectivity. Companies such as BT Conferencing and Glowpoint have built an entire service model around interoperable extranet video conferencing, but as a managed service they require customers to subscribe on a monthly/usage basis and only enable calls between customers. Other service providers are creating integration points to enable video calls between their customers and customers of competitor's network services.

Other approaches, such as enabling companies to register their video gateways via DNS so anyone wishing to place a video call could simply look up the IP address of the gateway haven’t really taken off, mostly due to fears around security and spam (e.g. unsolicited calls to the gateway).

For many wishing to conduct a video conference beyond the firewall, the solution is still to simply use a web conferencing application such as Adobe Acrobat Connect or Cisco WebEx, or to use Skype or one of the many other public video chat services. But none of these are solutions for those who want high quality room or immersive telepresence sessions.

The reality is that we are getting closer to video beyond the firewall being as easy as a phone call, but for the immediate future such capabilities will only be available through managed service providers.