Trends for Indian enterprise conferencing

BANGALORE, INDIA: The Enterprise Web Collaboration market is expected to grow significantly as it migrates from standalone Collaboration to fully integrated suites of collaborative communications. While the adoption and usage of Web Collaboration is expected to gain momentum over the next several years, the integration of discrete communication applications into unified communication/collaboration products will blur the lines between Web Collaboration and other technologies, such as audio and video Collaboration, instant messaging, presence, VoIP, unified messaging, on-line shared workspaces, and document management solutions.

The key drivers for Enterprise Web-Collaboration are-the last mile Internet connectivity and availability of good-quality 'dependable' Internet bandwidth (broadband), convenience and cost saving factor. The Web Collaboration market in India is said to be maturing. With broadband availability increasing and prices dropping, the Web-Collaboration market has reached an inflexion point.

Collaboration and enterprise conferencing

Collaboration is not just some over-hyped buzzword, but has become an essential part of business life. Many collaboration tools offer the ability to get started immediately, with no training, no set-up costs, and very low ongoing overheads.

Nearly every organization is looking for innovative business tools that can help them collaborate with employees and customers in real-time while increasing revenues and decreasing expenses. Now, more than ever, companies are integrating web meeting applications into key areas such as sales, marketing, and customers.

With highly effective communication and interaction, it is easy for businesses to get started and even easier to scale throughout their various operations, with minimal impact on IT or internal operations. The web meeting helps businesses keep global workers connected and moving forward towards common goals. It helps companies make more money by spending less. Now that’s the dawning of a new business era all by itself.

Cisco WebEx has around 65 per cent market share globally. Cisco WebEx has been awarded the prestigious Market Leadership Award for “Audio & Web Conferencing Services” in FY 2008 by, global growth consulting firm, Frost & Sullivan.

This award reinforces our commitment to the Indian market — and our commitment to play our part in enabling India to become the global powerhouse she has the potential to be. We have consistently strived for high functionality, reliability, security, and enhanced value for our product offerings. We see our services not merely as a technology solution, but also a range of specialized applications that solve specific business problems and enable business processes to become more efficient.

This offers huge benefits for companies in terms of cost where there is a shift from their Capital Expenditure to the Operating Expenditure. Pay per use conferencing also provides for seamless interoperability with existing systems, so companies do not have re-invest in additional infrastructure, to accommodate this. To put it in a nut shell, the advantages of pay per use conferencing are manifold:

Low or No Investment - The pay-as-you go model offers greater flexibility to the user. Today, no one really wants to buy software. Customers want the benefits that the software delivers at the lowest cost possible. The best way to achieve this is through SaaS - Software-as-a-Service, which means the delivery and remote access of software applications via a web browser - the next mantra that will drive enterprise productivity in the coming future.

Scalability - There is a greater scope for innovation with a provision to add to the existing features. An organization can scale their software ability across the organization almost instantaneously.

It requires no maintenance or upgrade cycle and does not require IT support team.

(The author is director - Operations (APAC), Cisco Systems Pvt Ltd )