BANGALORE: In today's world of traffic jammed roads, jam-packed public transport systems, and over-crowded airports, delays have become a part and parcel of everyone's lives. Earlier for instance, one could easily catch an early morning flight from one metro city to another (del-bom-blr), and still reach in time to catch a morning meeting. Today however, thanks to the inadvertent flight delays, this is just not possible. Instead, you end up taking the previous evening's flight and reaching your destination very late in the night (because even the evening flight gets horribly delayed), and attend a morning meeting all bleary eyed because you couldn't catch enough sleep.

And then there are the infamous govt. infrastructure projects like the High Capacity Bus System Corridor in Delhi, which has completely thrown traffic out of gear over a 14-km stretch. There are also the floods in Mumbai, which happen during every monsoon, and bring the city to a complete standstill. There are also the dreaded one-ways in Bangalore, which confuse the hell out of even local commuters because the routes keep getting redefined.

So what's the solution to all these delays? No business can wait for the public infrastructure to catch up. If you need to discuss something important with a customer, then it has to happen at any cost, no matter what the infrastructure. A phone call doesn't always fulfill the need, and travelling wastes a lot of time. The only solution left therefore is to deploy video conferencing.

The first significant boost that video conferencing industry received was after 9/11, because people were avoiding travel due to fear. Today, air travel is once again on a high. In fact, it's so high 
that the infrastructure is playing catch up to cope with the increasing traffic. The delays it causes in air travel makes everyone wish that they could somehow avoid it. That makes another perfect case for video conferencing.

Interesting applications of Video Conferencing

Besides saving time and money in travel for business meetings, many other interesting applications of video conferencing have also emerged. One of them is the famous tele-justice project, a video conferencing deployment by Polycom in Indian jails and district courts. This has cut down on the transport expenses (fuel + manpower) associated with taking the accused from jails to courts for trial. It also reduces the security risk of transporting hard core criminals. Then there are industrial uses of video conferencing, such as Tandberg's FieldView, a WiFi-based handheld video device that can be used for remote inspection of sites, allowing on the spot troubleshooting.

The latest application being talked about is mobile video conferencing, wherein you can be on the move and still be able to have a video conference with others. So imagine being able to video conference with others from your phone over a GPRS or 3G connection.

Let's now look at the different video conferencing solutions that have emerged to cater to all these requirements.

One size doesn't fit all

Before implementing a video conferencing solution, remember that there's no single video conferencing solution that will fulfill every organization's requirements. For instance, a healthcare institute would use video conferencing to provide remote diagnostics and tele-medicine services to remote areas. The tele-medicine deployment at AIIMS is one such example, which is used to provide medical training and consultation to over 100 locations across the country.

A manufacturing company on the other hand, could use it to monitor production machinery, or for sharing blueprints of an engineering prototype. Here, the customer could be sitting abroad, the production plant could be in a remote area, and the marketing and sales office could be in another area. This would make it impossible to hold a meeting between sales, customer, and production/engineering representatives. So, a multi-point video conferencing solution is the best option. Moreover, the customer might want to suggest a few changes in the blueprint, so real-time solution collaboration would also be required.

Likewise, a financial institute might need to keep all branches up to date on the latest banking schemes and changes in govt. policies. Perhaps the bank's MD wants to always remain in touch with all his key bank managers across the country. With so many branches, travelling to each one, or bringing all executives in one place would be extremely difficult, time consuming, and expensive.

Likewise, an educational institute might use video conferencing to provide remote education to students. Many institutes are already using video conferencing to host virtual classrooms for their distant learning programs. Others are recording lessons and streaming them over the Internet for students, who could be sitting around the world.

As you can see, the video conferencing requirements are completely different industries for each industry we talked of. So it's not possible to have one solution for every one.

Tele-Presence in Action 

Left Notice the conference table on both sides. It appears as if the virtual and real tables combine to form one table. Right: The camera placement is such that when one person talks, everyone turns to him or her. 

Key elements in a video conferencing solution

Simply speaking, a video conferencing system comprises of a microphone, camera, display unit, speakers, and a codec. As simple as it sounds, the deployment isn't as simple, because there are lots of choices available for each component. All components could be fitted into one standalone unit, a laptop, mobile phone, or even be available as separate units. You decide what you want depending upon your requirements. If it's an immersive experience you need, where you feel as if you're sitting face to face with the person at the remote location, then you need a high-definition video conferencing solution. This would require a high-definition camera, a large screen, surround sound speakers, and oodles of bandwidth.

But if it's just a face you want to see, purely for eye-contact, then a desktop with a webcam and codec are all you need. All other video conferencing solutions fit between these extremes. Let's look at the different options that are available:

Simple Desktop video conferencing: This solution comprises of a web cam and a software codec installed on a PC or laptop. Most laptops today come with a built-in webcam. This solution is of course, purely IP based. You could use it while on the move, but don't expect great video quality because of codec quality and inconsistent bandwidth.

Dedicated Standalone Unit: These are dedicated units, complete with all video conferencing elements like LCD TV, camera, microphone, etc. These are costlier, but provide better quality. You could use them in a small office, or even out of home, because they're small and portable.

Group Video Conferencing: The equipment needed here would be individual cameras, screens, microphones, all connected to a MCU (multipoint control unit). The numbers and type of each depends upon the size of the meeting room, the number of locations that need to be connected, and the quality of conference that's required. This sort of a solution is suitable for conference rooms, boardrooms, etc.

Web Conferencing: If you need to go beyond face to face meetings and into sharing data like presentations, engineering blueprints, etc, then a web-based meeting is the best option. Multiple people can join into the meeting with their laptops and webcams. Due to this, you don't need to invest in any equipment. All you need is bandwidth, and even the requirement for that is not very high. There are many online collaboration sites that provide this service. Web-Ex for instance is a well-known solution in this domain.

Deploying Tele-Presence

This is actually a group video conferencing system, ideal for the boardroom of a large enterprise, but we've kept it as a separate category because it's suddenly started gaining momentum in the market. Tele-presence is the ability to have life-like images of the remote locations right into your meeting room, on the other side of the table. A tele-presence solution comprises of very large displays that produce life-like images of the person sitting at the remote location. Images will be captured using high-definition cameras, which will be strategically placed to create the appearance of direct eye contact. This, along with surround sound speakers will make you almost feel as if you're sitting face to face with all others in the conference.

One key point to remember while deploying tele-presence is that it's supposed to give you the impression of a face-to-face meeting. It's the experience you get from such a solution that really matters, and you have to ensure that the solution you deploy provides you that experience. So many finer points need to be looked into while deploying a tele-presence solution. One is the quality of cameras and their placing. They should be placed so as to give you the impression of eye contact. It should not appear that anybody is looking at the camera. The cameras must be able to follow the sound, so the moment anybody speaks, then the cameras need to focus on that person.

If you really want to get the feeling of sitting face to face with somebody, then the meeting room environments of both areas have to look similar. A tele-presence system should be able to provide you this kind of a setup.

Another very critical part of a tele-presence solution is ease of use. Remember, it's a company's top brass that would be using it, and they don't have time to toil with the technicalities of a technology.

Deploying high-definition video conferencing

Another rising star is high-definition video conferencing, which provides much better quality than conventional video conferencing. As the name implies, high-definition video conferencing provides much better visual quality than standard definition. So while a SDVC setup would provide a resolution of 480p or 640x480, an HDVC setup can offer 720p or 1280 x 720 resolution, leading to far better quality. You obviously need high-definition equipment in a tele-presence deployment, but you can also use it otherwise. Benefits of high-definition are quite obvious. As you use larger screens, the image quality of standard definition is likely to distort because you're basically 'stretching' a lower resolution picture on a higher resolution screen. But with high-definition this doesn't happen, thereby giving you excellent picture quality.

While there can be many applications for it, one interesting application is for conducting remote operations. The objective of using high-definition is that the patient should be able to see the expressions on the doctor's face during the operation. This instills confidence in the patient's mind for the doctor.

How much bandwidth?

Bandwidth plays a critical role in any video conferencing system. You might have spent a bomb on the video conferencing solution, but if you haven't provisioned for sufficient bandwidth, then your deployment will just not succeed. Since video conferencing is about the ability to have a face-to-face meeting, you can't afford to have connection difficulties, poor image quality, jitters, dropped calls, etc. These will dissuade anybody from using the video conferencing system, and people would resort back to phone calls or personal meetings.

So the question obviously is-how much bandwidth? For a conventional video conferencing solution, you need 384 kbps bandwidth for a full-screen, jitter free video conference. Similarly, high definition video conferencing would require at least 1 Mbps, while tele presence requires 15-20 Mbps. Not only that, video conferencing traffic is also delay sensitive; so you need to configure QoS policies on your network. In case of tele-presence, you need to even check your service provider's network and ensure it's able to handle the load.

What to expect in future?

On the technology front, you can already get a feel of a face-to-face meeting thanks to tele-presence. The only thing that's left now is to convert the high-definition image into a 3D one. Holographic displays are the answer to this, which actually create a 3D image of a person. This technology is of course still far from being commercially deployed for video conferencing, but given the pace at which things are moving, you never know.

Other developments in video conferencing include integration with unified communication, and moving away from the H.323 standard to SIP. Currently video conferencing is still considered to be an overlay network, but in the near future, it will form a part of the IP network, and you'll have to enforce strong QoS policies to ensure good quality video conferencing.