Conference room video sits at the intersection of two contradictory trends, as industry experts will explore at Enterprise Connect Orlando.
Conference room video seems perpetually in a tight spot, stuck in a corporate niche between the high-end telepresence systems catering to the executive echelon and the quick-and-easy desktop or mobile video apps popular among so many others. But on it lives — and adapts.
Video endpoint vendors haven’t given up on the conference room, despite flat sales. Here’s why: Employees are using room-based systems now perhaps more than ever, as we learned from Michael Frendo, executive vice president of worldwide engineering for Polycom, back in December (see 5 Trends to Watch in Video Collaboration). Some Polycom customers, he told us, report usage of their room systems at 80% to 90%.
To be sure, conference room video has its purpose. Reducing travel costs remains a big driver, and supporting ad hoc meetings among far-flung colleagues is another. And say a team needs to confer with an expert at another location and video conferencing is the preferred means of communications. Sitting around the big screen in a conference room tends to be much more conducive to communications and collaboration than huddling around one team member’s desktop or tablet — wouldn’t you agree?
