Telecom Lead India: Global video conferencing market is set to gain momentum in 2013.
A Polycom survey says video conferencing is evolving rapidly – how it’s used, where it’s used, by whom and for what – and its use as an enterprise productivity tool is also growing rapidly.
According to the Polycom survey, the top benefit of video conferencing is increased efficiency/productivity (94 percent), followed by increased impact of discussions (88 percent), expedited decision making (87 percent), and reduced travel costs (87 percent).
Desktop PCs and laptops are the most common device used for video conferencing (71 percent of respondents), followed by room/group video systems (65 percent), tablets (34 percent) and smartphones (33 percent).
Conference rooms are the most popular environments for video conferencing today. 79 percent of respondents use video in conference rooms, 69 percent use video in offices.
According to Infonetics, sales of PBX-based video endpoints, which more than doubled in 2012, are driving the market growth. PBX-based video is proving popular for enterprises because it offers a cost-effective way to enjoy multimedia communication.
The global enterprise video conferencing and telepresence market grew 10 percent sequentially in fourth quarter of 2012 to $822 million.
In 2012, endpoint shipments rose 47 percent, driven by the growth of PBX-based video.
Revenue for nearly all dedicated videoconferencing systems declined in 2012, with some segments falling off significantly; only multipoint control units (MCUs) held steady.
Asia Pacific was the only region to notch positive revenue growth in 2012, up 11 percent over 2011.
Cisco and Polycom continue to lead the dedicated videoconferencing equipment market.
“We view 2012 as an aberration, and see long-term interest by enterprises to deploy video communications, helping the market to sustain a 6 percent CAGR through 2017,” said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics Research.
On a rollercoaster ride for the past 2 years, Infonetics expects the immersive telepresence segment to bounce back.
Factors driving the future growth of enterprise video include advances in and proliferation of technology (e.g., high-definition video, bandwidth); demographic and communication trends; and specific use cases such as telelearning and telemedicine.
Video conferencing players such as Polycom and Vidyo are gearing up for new launches.
For instance, Vidyo announced a virtualized, cascadable infrastructure for video conferencing that scales across large, geographically dispersed implementations.
Vidyo says the release of VidyoGateway and VidyoPortal Virtual Editions (VE) will complete the virtualization of Vidyo’s core infrastructure and open the door to mass adoption.
VidyoGateway VE and VidyoPortal VE will ship in Q2 2013.
“As organizations continue to virtualize their business-critical applications, the ability to have robust solutions for the virtualization of video conferencing infrastructure is important,” said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware.
According to Forrester Research, a survey of North American and European IT decision makers indicated that by 2013, approximately 78 percent of their x86 server operating systems will run on virtual servers, rather than on server hardware.
Amir Shaked, Vidyo’s Senior VP of Product Management, said: “We offer a video solution that supports any deployment model: premise-based, private cloud, public cloud or hybrid. Vidyo’s software licensing model further enhances the benefits of virtualization by allowing customers to take advantage of floating licenses and cascading.”
Meanwhile, Polycom announced broad interoperability for Microsoft Lync 2013 that includes new qualified Polycom voice solutions and a new software extension to the Polycom RealPresence Platform that will deliver interoperability between Lync 2013 and the full portfolio of Polycom video collaboration and content sharing solutions.
Arvind Krishna
