Video conferencing addresses the Collaboration needs of the future

TWICKENHAM, U.K. - Dec. 11, 2013 - PRLog -- Video conferencing is increasingly seen as an important business tool for businesses and to enhance communication and collaboration between employees, partners and customers. No longer seen as a tool just for early adopters, video conferencing technology from vendors such as Cisco is making the technology more affordable to allow mass market rollout. It is estimated that nearly 50% of information workers will have a personal video solution in 2016, up from around 15% today.

The technology required to allow video conferencing participants to see and hear each other include the codec software plus a program that connects the parties together, which also manages the exchange of voice and video between participants.

Video meetings are either point-to-point or multi-point. In point-to-point a single person or group is connected to another, often via webcams and microphones integrated into computers, or it may be via a dedicated room-based hardware solution. In multi-point conferencing, three or more locations are connected via “video bridges” or multi-point control units (MCU), linking virtual meeting rooms on a single data stream of voice and video. The video bridge must be able to create and manage multiple simultaneous virtual video rooms, allocate a portion of the screen to each member of the meeting and send back a collective stream of real-time audio and video.

A further complexity is added when different locations are connected over a mixed environment of digital and analogue devices, streaming at different speeds and using different data transport protocols. In this case the MCU must be able to translate or “transcode” between protocols and allow the highest speed and video quality compatible to each individual device. It’s important to remember that not all MCUs have this transcoding capability and this might highly affect the quality of video calls, allowing the devices to join the bridge at the lowest common speed.

When an MCU is well designed, integrates multiple vendors and allows users to call at the best rate available, the result is an easy, seamless experience, which allows people to focus on their meeting, not the technology.

Working with technologies from Cisco Systems, Unifi Communications (http://www.unificomms.com/) can provide end to end video conferencing solutions to and from the desktop, mobile devices, and the boardroom with easier, more transparent interactions and consistent experiences. Affordable solutions provide superior scale through hardware, software, and cloud architecture strategies, and help enable any-to-any video through standards-based technology. We can provide video conferencing solutions that are easy to use, deploy, maintain, and integrate. Users get intuitive interactions, less dependence on IT, and a single identity across all devices.

Additionally, Cisco Business Edition 6000 (http://unificomms.com/cisco-unified-communications/cisco-...) provides unified call-control to ease administration, speed deployment, and simplify troubleshooting. It's all based on an integrated end-to-end architecture that uses the intelligent network for highly secure, reliable, more comprehensive, and overall better user experiences.