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A View From The Virtual Road –
Volume 3, Number 4
Observations on technology trends from the latest conferences
and seminars.
August 30, 2009
 In
This Edition:
• Not On The Road –
Going Green
• The Wainhouse
Window Into The Future
• Scalable Video Coding –
Starting to Feel The Momentum
• UC Not Clear - But
Free
• Are The Hardware
Manufacturers Going Away
This “View From The Road” is
different from those I have written in the past. A few weeks ago, while a number of
friends and colleagues were gathered on the banks of the Charles River at
the Royal Sonesta hotel, I had to be in New York for a very
important meeting. So, with special
thanks to the folks at Wainhouse Research and On24 I virtually attended
(most of) the Wainhouse Research Collaboration Futures Summit. Combining what I saw with the input of
some of my colleagues in attendance I present the first View From The virtual
Road. Let’s just call it doing my
part to save the planet for a change.
I have attended (or
viewed) the annual Wainhouse Research Summit for about six years now. I find that the team at Wainhouse that
puts it together always manages to focus-in upon issues that turn out to be
critical for the collaboration industry.
This year was no exception – with the topics of Scalable Video
Coding (SVC) and the evolving state of Unified Communications as the
themes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As I mentioned
during my InfoComm
review, Scalable Video Coding (h.264 annex G) is emerging as a very
exciting and disruptive technology for our industry. It represents the potential of
eliminating the need for transcoding, eliminating the need for QOS on
networks, and serving up live, low-latency video at whatever the speed or
quality your pipeline happens to have.
Many of the Wainhouse speakers addressed this emerging standard, one
of the first being Sascha Hach
of Google.
His demonstration
of Google’s video conferencing application was nothing short of outstanding. When one thinks of what a Google video
conference would probably look like, jumpy, “Skype-like” images would come
to mind. Their application was far
from this – a high quality, great resolution two way video conversation –
using SVC. Again, disruptive is the
thought that comes to mind. If you
think back to the last time you bought a PC mapping application (remember
those?) you realize that once Google Maps came out you didn’t need to spend
that money anymore. At $4 per user
per month for this service I can’t imagine that the video conferencing
hardware manufacturers are very happy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This message was
picked up by subsequent speakers as well.
Wainhouse’s own Brent Kelly gave a thought
provoking presentation on the state of Unified Communication.
He was careful to
show how the much desired definition of UC and solid clarity within the
space was still very lacking, however he made one excellent observation –
that there is a growing belief that visual collaboration in the UC space is
perceived to be free. Senior
leaders, manufacturers and users all believe that the cost model is that of
slapping a web-cam on a PC you already own and running software you already
own. (Anyone who wasn’t sure about
that beforehand had Google’s earlier demonstration to reflect upon.) It will be very difficult to sell
hardware into this environment going forward.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There were of
course a number of other presenters and panel discussions. The panel discussion closing the first
day included Mike Valletutti of AGT, Jerry Pompa of Compunetix, Steve
Bleiberg of Johnson & Johnson, Bob Romano of Radvision
and Judd Cain of York Telecom.
Not waiting very long
to comment, Bob
Romano joked during his introduction that Wainhouse suggested his firm and all hardware
manufacturers would soon be out of business with the growth of SVC. (While all the vendors joked about that,
none of them really addressed the question.) Jerry did explain that the vendors are
changing as well – adapting as the industry changes and continuing to
improve. Bob was convinced that the
emerging desktop solutions becoming available wouldn’t threaten room based,
group based and telepresence systems at all – that they are different needs
with different solutions. The
remainder of the covered topics included a detailed discussion of how the
industry is changing focus from a hardware business to a (managed) service
business, the complexities of current solutions and how these dynamics play
out in a typical enterprise. It was
interesting to note that even the tried and true old school video guys are
now referring to what they do as Unified Communications. Everyone agreed that that the technologies
are sufficiently complex to just about require a managed service for any
successful enterprise visual communications deployment.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All of the presentations (other than Google’s) were streamed
on the web and are available for review.
Contact the team at Wainhouse Research if you want to sign up to
watch them or future events of theirs.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s it for this
brief, virtual edition of A View From The Road. Look for the next one at the start of
2010 from the Consumer Electronics Show.
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A View From The Road is written by
David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions. David has spent
31 years in the audio visual and broadcasting industries. He has designed
facilities for firms such as AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley,
NYU and Lehman Brothers. He has recently joined JPMorgan Chase &
Company and is the IMCCA’s Director of Emerging
Technology. Email David at David.Danto.IMCCA@Danto.com
About the IMCCA
The Interactive
Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance (IMCCA) is a
not-for-profit user application and industry focused association with
membership comprised of service and product providers, consultants, and
users. Members benefit from the understanding and the use of various
interactive and collaborative communications technologies in their
professional and everyday lives.
For further information please contact Carol Zelkin, IMCCA Executive
Director, at 516-818- 8184 or czelkin@imcca.org.
Visit the IMCCA web site at www.imcca.org
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