Simplicity key to videoconferencing success

Videoconferencing technology is gaining popularity for specific applications such as distance learning, corporate communications and group meetings.

Schoolchildren in rural Oklahoma are taking virtual tours to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla. Bristol-Myers Squibb is conducting company-wide meetings at a savings of $14,000 per meeting. Consultants at Manhattan Associates are using videoconferencing to meet with multiple clients in one day with the added benefit of travel cost savings.

At the Howe Public Schools near the Arkansas border in southeastern Oklahoma, videoconferencing was brought in to help expand the curriculum in the district, but ended up having the opposite effect. "We wanted to bring classes in, but we ended up hiring teachers and do classes out now," says Lance Ford, technology coordinator for Howe and a neighboring district. Video is used to offer classes such as video production (taught by Ford) and Spanish to other area schools, with the remote school picking up part of the full-time teacher's salary. "Plus, we take our kids all over the country on virtual field trips."

Howe has about a dozen IP-based (H.323) videoconferencing units, ranging from a Polycom ViaVideo desktop device all the way up to a $30,000 Tandberg 6000 room system with big-screen plasma displays and document cameras. A 16-port Tandberg multi-point control unit (MCU) and eight-port Accord (now Polycom) bridge help connect the district to the outside world via the state's OneNet ISP, a 100M-bit network with four points of presence to the outside world and a Gigapop link to the Internet2 network. The district runs a Cisco-based LAN with video running separately from the data network, which helps simplify administration.

"I could have done priority packet routing with the Cisco [equipment], but I didn't want to question it," Ford says of creating two LANs. "I wanted to know the throughput on the video side and vice versa."

Ford says training is one key to success in getting dyed-in-the-wool teachers to use the newer technology as well as making it as transparent as possible.

"One thing we do in the distance-learning classrooms is use a locator mat, so when you step on it, the camera will focus on your location," Ford says. "Before, we had to focus the camera on the teacher's shirt or something, and it didn't work out as well."

To help simplify making a call, particularly to the outside world, Manhattan Associates, a supply-chain management systems consultancy in Atlanta, uses Polycom's MGC-50 gateway and Path Navigator software. "Before, users had to enter a "[special] key to get the ISDN call to work, now that they're going through the bridge, and just dial the phone number on the other end," says Chip Owens, senior telecommunications analyst with the company. "There's no features or codes that a user has to painstakingly figure out."

Videoconferencing helps connect Manhattan's consultants with clients and lets senior executives around the globe have meetings without traveling. IP is used for video calls on the internal network with ISDN providing the connection to the outside world, says John Drummond, systems operations manager.