Videoconferencing (VC) enables face-to-face interaction across geographic boundaries without the need for costly and environmentally unfriendly travel.
This is according to Paul Fick, divisional MD of Jasco, who notes that interoperability has proven to be a challenge given the variety of VC tools, solutions and platforms available, coupled with the bring your own device (BYOD) phenomenon.
Often, Fick explains, in proprietary environments, in order to conduct multi-party videoconferences, each participant has to be using the same device, or at the least a device from the same vendor or brand. This limits the use of VC solutions. A multi-connectivity solution is the ideal system to help organisations extend interoperability to any device and any platform.
"VC delivers the benefits of personal attention and face-to-face communications, without the time, cost and environmental impact associated with travel. The softer benefit of this is that it allows teams to communicate with more people faster and more easily, without the traditional associated travel fatigue, which then improves their working experience," Fick adds.
"Aside from this, VC enables organisations to make decisions faster, and allows for convenient collaboration, and document sharing and editing, no matter where the various parties are located. These benefits translate directly into benefits to the bottom line," he continues.
The ever-present bandwidth issue can be limiting, says Fick. While many vendors have adopted open standards solutions, which ensure interoperability between different devices and platforms, there remain a number of solutions that still use proprietary video standards.
"When organisations have multiple offices each running their own solutions, and wish to communicate using VC with customers and clients, there is no way of guaranteeing that all parties will be able to communicate effectively," says Andre Deetlefs, channel account manager at Avaya.
"When attempting to operate across platforms that use proprietary standards, the communication will often either fail to work completely or will work at reduced functionality levels, with some parties only able to connect video, while others may only achieve audio. This creates a frustrating environment that can limit adoption of VC solutions," Deetlefs adds.
Organisations have invested in VC solutions and expect the same quality of communications whether they are using the solution internally or to communicate with customers and channel partners, Deetlefs notes. Added to this, the BYOD trend enables employees to use their own devices in the workplace, or wherever they are, which means they too need to be able to participate in videoconferences using the platform of their choosing.
"Bringing these solutions together while ensuring that bandwidth usage is optimised and quality of service (QoS) is guaranteed for a seamless experience may seem like an insurmountable challenge. However, credit to advances in technology, multi-connectivity platforms have emerged to connect devices from different vendors and brands, as well as smartphones, tablets and notebooks, together for truly vendor-agnostic multi-party VC," Fick adds.
This not only provides new levels of interconnectivity, but it also allows organisations to leverage their existing investments, without needing to rip and replace solutions that were previously incompatible. A multi-connectivity solution can easily be deployed alongside the existing solution, ensuring interoperability without compromising on quality.
"These solutions not only protect existing VC investments; they allow for easier migration towards standards-based SIP protocols by providing full functionality before and during a migration. They simplify the complexity of VC across multiple devices, and conveniently enable BYOD to be accommodated," Deetlefs concludes. "Using multi-connectivity platforms, organisations can leverage greater value from their existing solutions, enabling the benefits of communication platforms to be realised more easily and in an integrated fashion."