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LONDON, UK: The widespread availability of low-cost, fast Internet access is driving growth of new web-based services, states a research report from Frost & Sullivan.
According to the report, with the advent of the Internet Protocol videotelephony (IPVT) client software, usably quality video conferencing (previously the preserve of the corporate boardroom) is now becoming widely available on the personal computer desktop.
"Despite the hype and the occasional re-launch every few years, video conferencing has failed to move into the mainstream of business communication," notes Frost & Sullivan Senior Industry Analyst Dominic Dodd. "Perhaps a little unfairly, an image of expensive but unreliable equipment remaining unused, continues to persist. The advent of the IPVT software client downloaded to a standard PC and utilising the Internet, is set to challenge that image."
The software-based IPVT client has only recently emerged in the communications space but serves as a potential threat to the long-standing video conferencing equipment market. At the same time, it also acts as a massive launch-pad for a new generation of video conferencing-based products and services. The main driver is the indispensable need for face-to-face communication in an increasingly global market.
The IPVT client can be loaded from web sites offering a wide range of business and consumer services, as is now frequently bundled with instant messaging (IM) and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) facilities to create a complete, IP-based personal communications tool.
The accelerated growth of digital media and social networking in the consumer markets, collaboration in the business space and crossover between these two worlds is stimulating growth and demand for technologies such as IPVT. The technology is rapidly becoming incorporated in several desktop applications, web-based business, as well as consumer digital media, communication, collaboration and social networking services.
The existing video conferencing industry is alert to this development, with participants adopting different strategies to replace low-end video conferencing products, defend the position of group systems and find new vertical applications for IPVT.
However, interoperability remains a key constraint to significant mass adoption, as the proprietary video coding standards being utilised by some service providers and software vendors threatens to restrict the user to a single community or requires them to load a different IPVT client for each community or social network they wish to join.
"The adoption of common standards for IPVT interoperability is crucial if there is to be mass adoption of interactive visual communications in the business and consumer markets," explains Mr. Dodd. "The implementation of open standards developed by video conferencing offers the means of connecting these disparate islands of users in a manner similar to that of the IM federation, which is already successfully uniting the IM population."
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