Dayal Hemrajani, chairman and MD of Enkay
Technologies talks about the migration of video
conferencing from IDN to WAN, LAN and IP and also how personalized carry-on unified
video conferencing solutions are what enterprises want today.
What is the latest that Enkay Technologies is
doing in the IP telephony space in India and abroad?
India is the third largest market after China and Japan
in Asia for video conferencing with a current market share of INR 350 crore,
which will go on to increase to INR 650 crore by 2016. Video in the enterprise
is growing by leaps and bounds. We estimate that over 50,000 additional video
endpoints are added within enterprises every quarter. These endpoints run the
gamut from high-end telepresence suites to high definition group conferencing
units to video kiosks. And, this is not counting desktop and web video that are
also beginning to emerge on laptops by business professionals. With broadband
and lease line services becoming more accessible and affordable, the user
expectation with regard to speed of data and video transfer is increasing. High
definition is the bare minimum that users want today, as compared to the early
90’s when they had to make do with speeds of merely 128 or 384 kbps.
How your latest video conferencing solution
with VCON is different from those offered by leaders in the video conferencing
space?
A lot of corporate clients in the Indian SME, ITES and
education segments have adopted video conferencing and enterprise video
collaboration suite from VCON in the last couple of years. Their unique
offering for individual industry segments like hospitality, ITES, BFSI and
education differentiates them from the rest of the industry. VCON enterprise
collaboration suite links up a room-based VC set up to individual desktop
clients, and web clients. From a desktop application to critical server based
multiple calling units, VCON solutions are capable of handling the highest
levels of video usage within an organization at a time.
In the hospitality sector, telepresence is a green
technology and its usage minimizes the CO2 emissions. To a hotel guest,
communicating with the people back home- be they family or co-workers from the
privacy of one’s hotel room becomes a necessity. Many hotel chains are really
taking steps towards improving their guests’ experience, but still fail to
deliver a truly personal” video conferencing experience. The average hotel guest
has to use the system in a designated business suite”, which makes the whole
process quite impersonal and very tedious. Most business guests travel with
their laptops, sometimes even with a webcam. So why leave the room to make a
video conference call? VCON offers this personal videoconferencing from one’s
own room, via EVCS which allows even web-based users to get connected to
desktop /laptop-based clients.
What are some of the unique telecom
applications/solutions that have gained popularity with your enterprise
clientele and why?
In spite of the fact that most enterprises still deploy
video as a standalone capability, recent market research indicates that
enterprises are increasingly recognizing the need to integrate video with the
rest of the enterprise communications fabric; that is, to create an integrated,
unified communications infrastructure. To obtain the greatest benefit from
these individual components, enterprises are moving toward unified
communications environments.
Companies deploying video can leverage for key advantages
when the video solution is tightly integrated in a unified and consistent way
with the enterprise’s unified communications environment: reduced management
overhead, consistent user experiences across devices, higher quality of
service, and easier integration into line of business applications. The better
unified communications architectures allow for SIP-based video and telephony
devices to seamlessly join in while continuing support for investments in
legacy H.323 and H.320 systems. Integrating control of the video endpoints into
the domain of the enterprise unified communications call control server removes
the silos between enterprise telephone systems and enterprise video systems
while providing a consistent calling and user experience.
What are your plans for the global market in
the next 1-2 years?
Visual communications proves its value day in and day
out, helping to build trust and understanding between colleagues as well as
with suppliers, partners, and customers. A video call enables personal
engagement, improved understanding and non-verbal all feedback at the same
time. Enterprises are now extending video beyond the meeting room, across the
organization, and into customer service applications. The key lies in
developing a well-conceived communications strategy that removes video silos by
unifying video with other ad hoc, multimodal communications mechanisms in the
enterprise.
By Beryl M
editor@telecomlead.com