Overcoming barriers to video conferencing

TRAVERSE CITY, MICHIGAN: A new generation of video communication solutions is overcoming obstacles that have prevented its adoption by small and mid-size companies (SMBs) and organizations, according to a white paper from Appia Communications entitled “The Benefits and Challenges of Video Conferencing.”

Appia, a leading provider of managed IT and telecom services, based the paper on the experience it gained developing video communication solutions for its own customers.

“Video equipment has historically been proprietary, expensive, and difficult to use,” said Victor von Schlegell, president of Appia Communications. “Also, video used ISDN, is charged by the minute at high rates. This made video sessions expensive, especially if some of the participants were located outside the U.S. ISDN is also unreliable and subject to outages.”

Changes involving the Internet, equipment strategies, and underlying technologies are leading to new video communication options that are affordable for nearly any business or organization.

“Large enterprises have realized the cost savings and productivity gains enabled by video communication, but now the technology can serve SMBs,” von Schlegell said.