UC
Last week I touched on interest around video conferencing and the growing desire among many IT managers to incorporate video conferencing into their unified communications plans. But there’s one area that usually generates a lukewarm response, and that’s desktop video. For the last few years we’ve researched desktop video adoption and found little enthusiasm among both IT leaders and the people they support. We hear about a lot of ongoing pilots, but little actual uptake, and only rarely do we hear of enterprise-wide plans to deploy desktop video conferencing capabilities to all employees. Why? A few consistent themes emerge. Lack of user interest. “Our employees simply don’t want to be seen” is a common refrain. Communications trends have gravitated toward less invasive technologies over the last few years, especially among the younger generation. Workers prefer e-mail, text messaging, and IM over communications channels requiring constant attention. Voice calls are the next step, but even voice calls give workers the ability to multi-task, or roam around and get a cup of coffee or a bite to eat while on a particularly long call. Video forces someone to commit their full attention to a call, especially when it’s a one-on-one or small group conference. Video also forces people to pay attention to the way they look, the neatness of their workspace or office, or the distractions such as pets and /or children that may enter the camera. Bandwidth nightmares. IT managers still express a great deal of fear over the bandwidth requirements to support desktop video. Even though most standard-definition cameras require no more than 128 Kbps for a decent quality call, the fact that desktop video is unpredictable causes the greatest concern. “How can we plan for bandwidth spikes if people start using this?” and “What happens if our users want HD at their desks?” are two common concerns we hear in our research interviews. While technologies such as Microsoft’s RTvideo codec and H.264 SVC limit performance concerns in low bandwidth situations, the mere fact that video bandwidth demand could quickly escalate sends shivers down the spine of those responsible for network engineering. How do I support it? “What happens when someone calls the help desk with video quality issues? How do I troubleshoot? What happens if it’s a PC issue?” are all concerns we hear from IT support staff. Desktop video is processor intensive, and how does the “network guy” figure out if a video problem is the fault of the network, or the fault of too many resource intensive applications fighting for CPU cycles on the user’s PC? In addition to the above we hear concerns around security and privacy (“we can’t have video cameras in our cubicles”), quality (“the small screen is useless!”), and lack of a business case (“How do I justify the investment necessary to support desktop video?”). So that’s the downside. But what about the upside? Where we continue to hear the greatest interest in desktop video is for integration with room-based systems, allowing those unable to get to a dedicated conferencing facility the ability to participate via their PC. As more companies expand telework and hoteling programs, desktop video becomes an essentially tool to give virtual workers the same collaboration capabilities as those in office locations. We also continue to see desktop video adoption driven by managers who believe that desktop video improves communications by limiting distractions; and thus require it for their group meetings or individual one-on-one calls with subordinates. Finally, we see desktop video deployments setting the stage for user generated video, leading IT managers to investigate tools from vendors including Cisco, Kontiki, Polycom, and vBrick to enable employees to create their own video and share it within and outside the company. Desktop video continues to represent the “black sheep” in the video conferencing world. Those responsible for video deployments or trying to respond to workgroup demands for desktop video must address the concerns of their operations and architecture teams, and balance those concerns against the needs of their users for more effective collaboration.
