wireless
Apple’s launch of the iPad 2, with front- and rear-facing cameras, may finally signal the start of rapid growth of mobile video conferencing. While there are still concerns over Apple’s closed architecture for its own Facetime service, it’s not unreasonable to think that video-conferencing vendors will champ at the bit to embrace the iPad 2 as a personal video-conferencing system.
The potential of the iPad 2 as a video-conferencing device means more bandwidth demand for already strained mobile networks and wireless LANs. With mobile data rate caps now commonplace, it’s likely that reasonable video performance will only come via wireless LANs with sufficient capacity to support the high-bandwidth demands of high-definition video. Perhaps more importantly, camera-enabled tablets (and smartphones) are likely to drive growth of streaming and end-user generated video within corporate networks. We’ve already seen increasing demand for user-generated video, driven by both popularity of public services such as YouTube, and greater use of video conferencing. Approximately 49% of companies are deploying tools for internal video collaboration and streaming, with another 24% evaluating for future rollout.
IT managers should plan for a video-streaming capability to support both the need to record conferences for later playback, as well as to foster innovation and collaboration, but pay careful consideration to wireless network demands.
