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Tightening the Belt
posted by T-Schanz @ August 15th, 2008
With the economy still in a slump, companies continue to find ways to trim the fat off projects. If a client brings us a project on a shoestring budget, reducing the amount of travel time is one way help keep costs in line. Most of our travel time at Avicom is due to client meetings. So, for the past few weeks I’ve been looking into alternatives to face-to-face meetings. Hardware-based video conferencing was the first thing that came to mind.
Some of you probably have your gears turning, thinking of Cisco, HP, Polycom, Lifesize, etc. (for anyone who hasn’t seen Cisco’s TelePresence system in action, definitely take a look). Providing a higher level of immersion compared to simple teleconferencing, hardware-based video conferencing is great when you have a dedicated room with dedicated equipment. But, should I expect our clients to have these resources available? No – we always want to be accommodating to our clients.
Furthermore, hardware-based video conferencing only works when the client is in the office, and only provides an audio/visual bridge. During the course of a normal meeting, we may use a laptop, projector, whiteboard and leave behind files the client finds interesting. How could we do these things in an effective manner with video conferencing? This brought to light two additional requirements:
• Accessibility: Anyone, anywhere can join the meeting.
• Unification: Instant message, speak, draw, share files and view other participants using a unified solution.
With the proliferation of broadband internet service and the fact that many of our clients carry laptops, turning to Web conferencing can address the accessibility requirement. Web conferencing provides the audio/video, but we still need unification.
Enter online meeting applications. Often grouped in the generalized Web conferencing category, online meeting applications take the audio/visual concept of Web conferencing and layer it with the unification requirement I mentioned above. There’s a wide array of competing products on the market, some even at no cost. We’ve been testing a few different applications in-house and the results have been promising thus far.
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