Though video conferencing has been touted as a technology that saves time and money, local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have still not embraced it.
So says Gene van der Walt, executive head of Vox Pureview, a unified communications solutions provider.
“With video conferencing, people are not required to travel or wait in queues to visit clients that are in different geographical areas as themselves. It allows people to meet more often face-to-face,” says Van der Walt.
According to a recent Cisco survey, the majority of frequent users of video conferencing say collaboration technologies save them at least two hours of valuable work time a week.
Infonetics forecasts that the global market will reach $5 billion by 2015, while Gartner is forecasting $8.6 billion for the same period, and Wainhouse Research predicts 20% or greater growth for the foreseeable future.
He also blames bandwidth limitations as another drawback to the uptake of video conferencing solutions in SA.
“Usability of video conferencing equipment is often still a barrier, with complex remote controls, call protocols and set-ups,” Van der Walt explains. “Support for these services is more often than not lacking due to limited skilled resources in the country,” he adds.
On the other hand, Bennie Langenhoven, managing executive at Tellumat Communications, says after a somewhat drawn-out rise in initial adoption, video is used with increasing frequency in the enterprise today.
“The market now seems to have hit a tipping point, with giant unified communications vendors getting in on the action. Mass adoption is likely to follow soon, along with significant changes in the ways we do business, marketing and communicate.”
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