Though the South African telecoms industry is yet to embrace video telephony, the technology is the future for the contact centre industry as it combines video, audio and sometimes telestration (online drawing).
So says Paul Fick, divisional MD at Jasco Enterprise Communication, who explains that video telephony uses wireless, cellular and broadband devices and channels to enable face-to-face collaboration, regardless of location.
An analysis conducted by Cisco indicated that video telephony presented very little additional risk to the existing IP telephony infrastructure.
Highlighting the growth of the technology, Cisco says it would take more than five years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks every second in 2015 - expected to be one million minutes of video content loaded each second.
The networking giant adds that video-on-demand (VoD) traffic will triple by 2015, equalling three billion DVDs per month, and that high-definition VoD will surpass standard definition by the end of 2011.
On the other hand, market research firm Forrester says IT departments tasked with managing their firm's video estate face rising levels of complexity with the emergence of high-end telepresence solutions.
“Business stakeholders are demanding support for multi-vendor video platforms, inter-company (business-to-business) videoconferencing, and end-user participation using different types of endpoints,” says Brownlee Thomas, principal analyst at Forrester.
Fick notes that South African enterprises and contact centres are not able to offer video telephony, though he believes it won't be long before the industry embraces this technology.
“There's video everywhere, more and cheaper broadband, and fast 3G. In the corporate arena, video conferencing and telepresence make a good business case for video telephony - face-to-face communication is desirable, improving the quality of interaction while cutting down on travel costs and time, enhancing both the business' eco footprint and staff productivity. But it's really consumers that will drive this wave of technology adoption,” says Fick.
He adds that there is a desire from consumers for richer interactions and experiences. “Adding video to voice, along with the capability to share documents or even drawings during the interaction, is no longer science fiction.”
Right now, Fick notes, cost, demand and capability (bandwidth) constraints position us at the 'ready' mark in SA.
“We need to ramp up to 'steady', because, as with so many other technologies of late, video telephony adoption rates could be surprising.”
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