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Friday, November 2, 2007
More on HD Video as a Catalyst to Sales - For the Financial CommunityThere appears to be a great fever in the marketplace today over the HD Video Deliverance. Don't get me wrong, the
new HD systems, especially those from HP and Polycom, deliver truly remarkable and VISIBLE evidence of a New Video Conference
Dawn. However, these grand new systems are being delivered prior to most major network overhauls. Cisco's
networking business resurgence is in full swing with most corporate networks being massively overhauled in terms of capacity
for LANS and WANs. Real Time delivery of packets along with traffic shaping and combing is a service that most Networking
Professionals can deliver. That's a first. As little as 1 year ago, the majority of the time there was a "video
network" issue - the requirement was on the video provider to trace the failing router sequence or the RTP protocol failure
(rare). Time and time again - it was the network equipment provider's gear that needed to be patched - not the video
conference codec or MCU.
So, the big network push is sure to pave new roads for the HD gear to traverse.
The HD high quality images are so impressive - you finally feel compelled to look at the other party and see the facial inflections,
mood swings, etc. However, for this to happen - you're looking at point to point calling capacity of at least 4Mbs.
In companies like IBM, BMW, and even Microsoft, that backbone bandwidth is just not there. But, its in the process of
being build out (a 12 month process).
No, HD video is indeed a MAJOR catalyst and is causing units to sell
themselves at the group system level. Most major video conference users in the medical, pharma, financial, and manufacturing
sectors will tell you they still have equipment that is 4 to 8 years old. The new systems have much better network management,
better end user interfaces, integration with the phone system, many have built-in collaboration for web conference or content
sharing (H.239). As the old systems are shut down and mothballed, look for conferencing vendors to begin sharing the
notion that these new systems have a shelf life of about 3 years (similar to a PC) and should be thought of as a recurring
business purchase. This is a new industry dynamic that could spark life into companies like Polycom, Tandberg, Cisco's
video unit, Lifesize, Huawei (watch them), and possibly Apple. As these modern day video conference units become more
integrated and as chipsets embed items like H.264, look for entries from AMD or Intel that allow desktop PCs to have the same
capability as HD Group System Units. More on this later... and the reality of this sea change phenomena.
Ken
10:55 am cdt
Thursday, November 1, 2007
HD Video - Catalyst to Sales or Overdue Replacement Cyclenew to blogging. Lots of interest in HD Video Conferencing. But are people buying HD video for the incredible
new resolution... or is it simply the water getting to the boiling point causing a rapid and long overdue replacement cycle.
My take is the later. Most companies can not utilize the blazing new bandwidth requirements for full HD video conferening.
Some of these systems can communicate point to point at 6-20 Mbs. That's a boat load of real time bandwidth and
if your IT staff and network are not ready, it will be crippled faster than a Texas grassfire... Ok... here in Texas we received
our share of rain this year - and you'd be hard pressed to get much going - unlike my poor collegues in california.
7:43 pm cdt
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