3 Steps to Building a Collaborative Business

Investing in technology tools that drive innovation and connect key stakeholders will help accelerate collaboration only if people know how to use these tools. Otherwise, instead of accelerating collaboration, you’ve just purchased some expensive dust collectors.

This is why adopting technology is just as important as the technology itself to advance collaboration within your organization.

Initiating User Adoption

What is involved in effective user adoption? Typically a training team is assembled and directed as to what should be covered in a training session. A more effective approach is to initiate user adoption by taking a “top-down” approach in communicating the vision. All collaboration sponsors should take the opportunity and put collaboration into practice. How can you capitalize on the opportunity?

The 3 Step Approach to Effective Technology Adoption

Using this approach will lead to successful technology adoption.

  1. Assessment
  2. Implementation
  3. Evaluation

It is important to note that in order to have real change in behaviour, it also takes time, a strategy and resources to make it happen.

1. Assessment

During the assessment phase, it is important to determine the strategy gaps that prevent an organization from achieving their collaboration goals. To successfully conduct an assessment, everyone must keep an open mind and avoid coming into the process with a predetermined solution in hand. Assessments must be extensive and include examining the organization’s needs in the three areas of collaboration: culture, process, and technology. Begin to collaborate by bringing in other resources such as HR, finance, and IT to help determine the organization’s current state. Describe the desired state and map the gap between the two. The assessment should aim to identify what the best solutions are to help achieve the organization’s desired goal. Many organizations believe that training will close the gap but it may not necessarily be the case. What if the assessment indicates that there are gaps in processes? The gaps can be filled.  For example, adjusting the way a purchase order is completed. Or, a culture gap may require extensive strategic changes that effect how the organization functions as a whole. It is key that executives tap into the knowledge of their training departments by completing a needs assessment prior to conducting training. Executives should also encourage other departments to collaborate in the assessment phase in order to ensure that information sharing lays the ground work for the next phase, the implementation strategy.

2. Implementation

Teamwork is vital during the implementation step. For example, introducing video conferencing, as a corporate-wide strategic initiative should include multiple stakeholders. The planning and implementation process should include a partnership between IT, Finance, Project Management, Training, and an executive sponsor. All the partners should participate in sharing their knowledge and insight to develop and execute the plan. The result of collaborating and openly sharing ideas is two-fold: an innovative plan and better buy-in leads to a higher adoption rate. When implementing a business improvement measure, a learning and development professional will recommend many short training sessions. This allows people to have the opportunity to absorb what they have learned and trainers can reinforce concepts. Real change occurs when what has been taught becomes the norm. Learners must be encouraged to adopt behaviours that support the business improvement strategy; this is where tangible organizational change will occur. Make the implementation process an evolution not a revolution.

3. Evaluation

There is a great saying: “What gets focused on gets done.” This is what the evaluation phase is all about. This is a time when organizations should review what is actually happening after training and this should be done shortly after training – say 4 to 6 months afterwards. A successful evaluation should include:

Teamwork should play a role in this phase as well. For an in-depth evaluation, consider using focus groups as a tool. Two focus groups should be conducted with:

  1. Stakeholders that were involved in planning and implementing the strategy
  2. Employees who are impacted to allow them to share their knowledge and experiences

Share feedback widely. Celebrate the accomplishments.

The knowledge collected from your evaluation stage will help you get a better understanding of how well collaborative approaches work in your organization and will help the organization to develop more informed plans for future implementations.

“I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.”

– Confucius

Confucius (Chinese philosopher & reformer, 551 BCE – 479 BCE) said, “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.” This holds true when using collaboration in assessing, implementing and evaluating changes to how your organization does business.

Collaboration technology that has been embraced by employees allows the organization to realize the true benefits the technology was meant to enable and encourages a culture of knowledge sharing, appreciation of challenges and successes, and becoming more flexible and competitive.

If you would like more information on the 3 Steps to Building a Collaborative Business, contact us.

Increasing the Velocity of Collaboration in Your Organization

138108046Using technology to bring people together over distance has become a commonplace activity but the number of options available to do this is mind-boggling. And most importantly, getting clarity on a solution can be difficult.

Collaboration is a powerful force. Organizations recognize this and use collaboration technologies in strategic ways.

There are strategic goals that can help your organization cut costs and drive revenues.

The Four Goals Are

  1. Enhance communication
  2. Speed problem solving
  3. Accelerate innovation
  4. Transform the way you do business

At a high level, organizations are looking to connect room systems and individuals together over distance with the following possible combinations:

In our last blog, we talked about the 4 different kinds of conferencing technologies:

Creating the Right Balance of Technologies

The idea is to create the right balance of technologies for individuals and for room systems that suit your organization. The capabilities and the costs of these conferencing technologies are different and each of these conferencing technologies brings a different dimension of richness to the collaborative experience. Think about this in terms of creating the right balance of the technologies. I like to use the analogy of a spinning top, which is made up of these four conferencing technologies.  Each of the four technologies has a different cost to implementing it and brings an associated benefit or richness of experience.

The Spinning Top Analogy

1)    You must have audio to effectively have any kind of real time conference. As audio is table stakes, it is the point of the top. Without audio the top will not spin. Without audio other conferencing technologies are simply ineffective.

2)    The portion of the top that each of the 4 modalities makes up relates to the richness of that conferencing modality. How robust does your Top need to be?

3)    There is also a related dollar cost to each of the conferencing modalities and those cost figure into the overall cost-benefit equation.

The Velocity of Collaboration Revisited

In my last blog, I adapted the four conferencing modalities described above from the Frost & Sullivan, Velocity of Collaboration model.  Your organization’s Velocity of Collaboration will be determined by two factors:

1)    The Richness of the conferencing capabilities that are deployed

2)    The Access your employees are given to these technologies (Access = Availability + Usability)

The “Richness”, combined with “Usability” and “Availability” of the technology will determine the Velocity of Collaboration that your organization can attain.

The Velocity of Collaboration Formula

An organization must decide which of the conferencing technologies are required for connecting over distance. With these benefits you can determine the level of collaboration that can be achieved.

This graphic below shows the relative richness of the conferencing modalities.  Richness, together with how you have deployed the technology, your Access (= Availability + Usability), determines how your collaborative capabilities will increase.

Create an Enabler to Greater Collaboration Within the Organization

Once user based collaboration capability requirements are determined, you can select the technologies for meeting rooms and for individuals connecting into conferences. This process is critical and avoids a lot of wasted effort. It also brings a cohesive approach to the technology roadmap your organization requires and helps turn the patchwork of technology found in most organizations into a tapestry.

Going back to the RFI discussion in Part I of this blog, the customer would like Teleconferencing and to layer in Webinars when an Internet connection is available. Teleconferencing, also known as audio conferencing is the most basic form of conferencing technology hence it provides the least “Rich” collaborative experience.  Note the customer’s interest in webinars made possible via web conferencing reflects a desire for a richer collaborative experience.

That is why I asked the questions:

I think the answer to each of these questions is “No”.

The ET Group has helped many organizations through this process. Please contact us if we can be of assistance to your organization.

5 Myths of Telepresence and What They Mean to Your Business

If you’re reading this, there is a good chance you have more than a passing interest in collaboration, video conferencing or telepresence. Confused? You’re not the only one. You can’t use search terms like collaboration, or telepresence without coming up against different definitions, methodologies or applications. You walk away from a search like that inevitably asking: “What’s the right definition?”

That is the problem with terms like collaboration and telepresence. They are broad and sweeping and you will be hard pressed to find many people who have the same definition. But that isn’t a bad thing.  Creating authentic communication and collaboration isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” industry.

5 Myths of Telepresence

Recently, Cisco published an article on their blog debunking five myths around telepresence. These myths are things that we, at ET Group, have come across time and time again when talking to clients. The Myths Cisco talks about are:

Myth #1. “It’s unaffordable and only for the enterprise”

Myth #2. “Web-based consumer services are good enough”

Myth #3. “Software vs. hardware”

Myth #4. “Telepresence is too complex to set up and use”

Myth #5. “The payback is limited to travel”

Debunking The Myths

Debunking the myths is important for three reasons:

  1. It gives existing telepresence users a way to gauge their investment.
  2. By putting the myths under the microscope readers can take stock of any preconceptions they might have.
  3. It helps people to make good decisions when developing a technology roadmap for the next five years.

Myth #1. “It’s Unaffordable and Only for the Enterprise”

I’m going to leave the telepresence ROI discussion to my peers. I’m going to focus on Myths 2-4 because they’re centered more on the technology involved behind the scenes and the user experience.

Myth #2. “Web-Based Consumer Services Are Good Enough”

In previous blog articles We’ve discussed the pros and cons of consumer grade services for your business Video Conference needs. Recently, Microsoft began folding its MSN messenger application and pushing those users towards their Skype platform. The only announcement which improves Skype’s business readiness as a result of this move is an improved mobile application. Mobility without security isn’t going to offer businesses a new experience with Skype. In fact, it would be my guess that the fanfare of the new Skype user base may impact performance with the sheer number of subscribers. Why do I say this? Skype and MSN have had high profile outages in the past due to congestion. It’s worth thinking about what would happen with their combined user bases.

Myth #3. “Software Vs. Hardware”

This question is at the heart of every video conferencing roadmap, and it feeds into three key questions:

  1. How do you want to collaborate? For an example read 3 Real-Life Solutions to Ensure Video Conferencing Adoption.
  2. Where do you want your teams to work? See a previous blog Do you Lack Meeting Room Space? Without Exception, Every Company or Agency I Speak with has This Problem.
  3. What can I leverage today, for tomorrow? Further discussed in the blog Conference Room Audio Visual Solutions are an Integral Part of a Well Executed UC&C Platform.

People often ask, how do I ‘future proof’ my investment? Do I go with a desktop client like Jabber, Lync, or Vidyo; or invest in an integrated boardroom solution? After we start discussing the three questions above, we often find that clients want to do both.

The reasons clients may wish to do both vary, but it boils down to one thing: In many telepresence deployments there is tremendous investment overlap in the requirements for mobile versus office deployments. Understanding this allows clients to prevent the conversation from starting as a “this or that” discussion and making it about workflows and where collaborative technologies can enhance productivity.

Myth #4. “Telepresence is too Complex to Set Up and Use”

I think that it is important to recognize the difference between complex, and flexible. Yes, there are many different ways that you can deploy telepresence. But, that’s true of your Phone System or PBX, and it’s just as true of your computing environment whether its Windows, Mac or Linux based. Options don’t inherently mean complexity, and anyone that tells you differently is avoiding the question.

Options mean that you have to take a very sober look at where your company’s deployment is starting from, and where you want to develop your collaborative ecosystem too in the next five years. But building the ecosystem is only half of the battle.

The other half of this myth is using telepresence; the user adoption of the technology. User adoption is a microcosm of how companies adopt new technologies. Most, will have a few highly evangelical adopters who will win over the office over a period of time. A few will adopt a technology and have it sit unused while they try to figure out what its business application will be. Rarely will everyone see the need to make a change and jump in with both feet. At its heart, user adoption is a battle of perception. Developing adoption comes down to three things, dispelling fears and doubts, kicking the tires, and users finding what’s in it for them.

What Will Telepresence Mean for Your Business?

A lot of what I’ve talked about, and Cisco’s blog post can be summed up into one question: What will Telepresence mean for your business?

If anything, this blog has shown you that there isn’t one-way to answer this question to satisfy everyone. The next time you go to search for collaboration or telepresence, instead of asking “What’s the right definition?”, ask yourself “How will my business define it?”

Cisco has done an excellent job of trying to dispel fears and doubts.  If you’re still stuck on the definition we at ET Group can help you with the rest.

Skype for Business – A Unified Communications Tool?

The most “fame” Skype has received is probably from the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” where the cast uses it regularly to communicate. For example, Raj’s parents who live in India are fringe characters in the show and viewers only know them via Raj who is using Skype on his laptop in the USA.

I use the word “fame” in quotes because TV has given Skype a level of notoriety, which most technology just doesn’t reach. The show has to some extent normalized the use of Skype. And note that the word Skype isn’t actually mentioned on the show but we assume that Skype is the program that is being used, as opposed to other system designs.

Skype – the Most Popular Internet Communications Software in the World for Voice and Video

Millions of people use it every day for personal communications.

According to TeleGeography, ”While international phone traffic growth is slowing, traffic from voice and messaging applications like Skype continue to increase at a stunning pace. TeleGeography estimates that cross-border Skype-to-Skype voice and video traffic grew 44 percent in 2012, to 167 billion minutes. This increase of nearly 51 billion minutes is more than twice that achieved by all international carriers in the world, combined.”

And those personal users are extending Skype for business use as well.

Skype is used for a lot more than video. In fact it really started out and is still primarily used for voice calls. Skype offers a full Unified Communication (UC) technology stack, which is pretty powerful, but not as “industrial” as some enterprise UC technology offerings from say, Cisco or Microsoft.

Skype’s full UC capabilities make it a lot more useful than any of the single communications capabilities on its own.

What Are the Core UC Capabilities Required in Order to Qualify as a UC Product?

  1. Presence
  2. Instant Messaging (IM)
  3. Voice
  4. Video

Skype’s UC Capabilities

Presence

Presence is about knowing the status or availability of the people that are part of your list of contacts in Skype. If you had 25 people that were on your list of Skype contacts, with a quick glance at the list you can determine if they are online, available, busy, etc. Presence is a handy tool to quickly see how your contacts are currently connected into the Skype world.

IM (Instant Messaging)

IM is no technology breakthrough but is very handy as part of a UC suite. IM let’s you send instant messages to your contacts, or create group message forums. This is handy in a number of situations; your contact shows as busy but may answer an IM message still keeping their voice or video call going; when you establish a voice or video call, one of the parties may have their mic on mute. IM allows communication to advise that they can’t hear the muted party; sending messages to one of the parties in a multi-party call as a side bar conversation. Interestingly Microsoft, which owns Skype, recently announced that they will be retiring Windows Live Messenger forcing users to upgrade to Skype.

Voice

Here is where Skype really shines. Free calling computer-to-computer anywhere in the world. That is how Skype went viral, established a huge user base and became a household name brand service. Skype’s voice offering capabilities have grown significantly since the early days and includes: Skype to landline; Skype to mobile; and multi-party conferencing calls (can still be dicey), and voicemail. Note: Most of the additional services are chargeable.

Video

Skype video is pretty good for person to person but their multi-party video offering is chargeable, requiring one participant to have a premier account and doesn’t work that well. I have used other products that allow me to conduct a good video to video call with limited bandwidth, where the same call using Skype, has Skype telling me to turn off my video because there is not enough bandwidth.

Skype will likely continue to develop this part of their technology solution. A case in point is that they just recently announced a new Video Messaging service where users (for a fee) can leave video mail messages.

Beyond Unified Communications

Skype also offers features, which go beyond the UC stack, such as: content sharing, files transfer, and SMS messaging. These features make the product more powerful and useful.

Skype also works on lots of devices, PC, Macs, tablets and phones, but typically the full UC suite is not available on all these platforms.

Skype is a powerful communications platform and is getting better all the time. It is not always the best platform for business or for connecting outside participants to meeting rooms.

Time will tell whether this changes as the product continues to develop. Skype’s continued growth and feature enhancement paints a rosy future for it. Skype is a great starter technology for enhanced communications.

But as you start to pay for more Skype features and push the limits of the technology, there are other viable options, which solve some of its limitations and are offered at a comparable price point. Contact us to discuss these alternative options like commercial grade video conferencing solutions like our HybridX.

Rule #1 for Video and Firewalls: Say NO to Helper Services

Video Conferencing and Firewalls

Firewalls are probably one of the biggest peace-of-mind purchases that an enterprise will make to ensure it’s secure from the outside world. More comprehensive firewalls offer a vast suite of tools and features to make the life of the administrator easier by automating as much of the process of security management as possible. When it comes to video conferencing technology, the lion’s share of firewall solutions are not as video friendly as the feature set suggests.

Today, many firewalls are equipped with things like SIP ALG or H.323 helper services, which the vendor suggests will allow clients to easily traverse the firewall and make a more seamless, more secure connection. The problem is that it’s rarely –if ever- the case. These services while helpful in theory, are often part of what is called Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI). SPI’s role in your protection is to open each bit of data passing in and out of your network to look for any threats and neutralize them before they cause any damage. This can cause significant performance problems for video conferencing.  Some firewalls can be “aware” or sensitive to the particulars of video conferencing protocol, although they also have some inherent risks, which need to be mitigated by your IT security policies.

What Does This All Mean? If it’s Not Fool Proof, Why Do it at All?

Every firewall is different and every enterprise uses their firewall differently. Hence, no two installations will be exactly the same. Because no two installations will be the same, firewall vendors have done quite a bit in recent years to provide the ability to turn off, or change the role of SPI and helper services on your firewall. Unfortunately in most cases, it isn’t enough. Video traffic passing through a firewall using helper services or SPI can severely lower performance because of the processing power required to monitor the traffic.

The other serious limitation of firewalls when it comes to video traffic and SPI is dynamic port allocation. All modern firewalls work very well against the model of fixed port allocation. In this model, the security admin defines what traffic on what port is allowed into and out of the network. As video and other business applications gain ground in network bandwidth usage this model becomes harder to maintain.

Video specifically requires very few fixed ports for connecting participants. It relies more heavily on dynamic port allocation, where a port or group of ports is chosen by the client to make a connection. Without a specific rule, most firewalls do not respond well to passing traffic through to allow this video connection. Ports used for video calls will fall within a set range as large as 10,000-20,000 possible port combinations and it’s a cumbersome undertaking to maintain. The firewall by design has to strike a balance between being porous and secure. Because that balance is required, video conferencing infrastructure has evolved to come up with ways of securely adapting to the needs of the network.

Two Ways to Handle the Firewall Question

There are two popular approaches to handling video traffic without compromising your network security. Video vendors understand that businesses want collaboration without compromising security, or network performance. With this in mind, two approaches have emerged to mitigate the risk to security and performance, and to provide the enterprise with peace-of-mind.

1. Larger Market Players take a Traversal Approach

They literally hop over the firewall, bypassing it with secured edge servers, or pass through it on a very limited range of open ports. This is a tried and true option utilized by large enterprises. It offers the greatest scalability and flexibility. IT Administrators prefer these solutions because they are designed with security policy in mind, resulting in an easy solution for the security minded to get behind.

2. Up and Coming Vendors Leverage Existing Infrastructure

Vendors can still offer rich experiences for their end users by leveraging existing infrastructure from the DMZ or the cloud. Depending on the deployment scenario, these solutions can require anywhere from 100 to as few as 0 ports.  In fact, they can even be offered as cloud services almost removing your corporate firewall from the equation. They are mobile focused, sleek, stylish and their flexibility makes them a sexy option for the “Bring Your Own Device” crowd.

Firewalls are not the only ‘helpers’ that can come into contact with your video conferencing traffic. At their core, WAN optimization technologies try to apply some kind of order to your public traffic. Their greatest advantage is that IT staff will already be familiar with the idea of Quality of Service (QoS). They will also be familiar with traffic shaping, which is fundamentally what these tools accomplish albeit on the open Internet instead of your corporate network.

These are relevant to a firewall discussion because unlike firewall helpers, WAN optimizers are generally very media sensitive tools. They are geared to improve your experience with video conferencing, but can also work to your advantage on other lines of business applications as well. Regardless of the vendor and the way it’s deployed, all video conferencing solutions eventually come back to the firewall.

Things to Consider Before Deploying Video Conferencing

1. Make Sure You Know What Your Firewall Vendor Supports and Their Limitations

2. Most Importantly, Discuss the Implications of Video Conferencing with an Integrator Before Deploying Video Conferencing to Your Users.

Having these two on your strategy checklist will be the difference between a rich pervasive collaborative experience and a pixelated game of charades.

If you have any questions concerning what your firewall vendor supports and the possible implications of your video conferencing system, please contact us.

Conference Room Audio Visual Solutions are an Integral Part of a Well Executed UC&C Platform

Unified Communications (UC) has been around for the last 15 to 20 years, maybe longer.

ThinkstockPhotos-175861511When I first heard about UC, it was about how IT and Telecom would come together. Fast forward to today and IT & Telecom have come together – in more flavours than most Baskin & Robbins stores carry. There is no single, clear path that every organization can follow to get to a UC platform. In fact, in most organizations there are different paths. It depends on where you are starting from and where you want to go. There will be an upcoming blog article discussing the different paths an organization can follow to implement UC.

More often than not, an organization starts with a patchwork of technologies. To capture the numerous benefits (ROI) from UC, that patchwork has to be transformed into a tapestry.

The benefits of UC are significant and are realized when you focus on solving business problems instead of applying technology.

But you still need the technology. And it is not apparent how rooms systems and conference room design are an integral part of UC and the broader picture UC&C, where the second “C” stands for Collaboration.

The systems that are found in boardrooms, meeting rooms, training rooms and other types of corporate meeting spaces were traditionally the realm of the Audio Visual (AV) world and managed by corporate Real Estate Operations. Those rooms have become connected beyond the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) line, and the responsibility for the technology in those rooms has been/is migrating to IT.

Conferencing Technologies

Today those rooms need to be connected for 4 types of conferencing:

Deciding which of these conferencing technologies should be available in a meeting room will determine the level of collaboration that the meeting room is capable of enabling. I will be doing a blog post shortly on conferencing technologies enabling collaboration.

A best practice for implementing UC&C is to identify your user base and group them into User Classes. You should have between 3 and 12 User Classes. A lower number is better, even for very large organizations. Having the defined User Classes lets you move to the next step – mapping the technology each user class requires to do their job – PC (desktop / laptop), telephone (fixed / mobile / soft), tablets and other (headsets, etc).

So, how does UC&C tie into audio visual communication room systems?

The same best practices to implement UC&C hold true for room systems. Meeting rooms and spaces require a clear definition of what collaborative technology is required in the room to support the four different conferencing technologies listed above. But they need to support those technologies in relation to the UC platform deployed. For example, this means that the video in the room system needs to be compatible/integrated with the video used in the UC platform.

Having the ability to connect remote participants into the room technology conferencing modalities to support the level of collaboration required is critical in a UC&C environment. Being able to easily connect workers seamlessly into the room/meeting spaces is paramount to capturing the benefits and ROI that UC&C can bring.

To facilitate the collaboration and innovation in your organization you need to:

The penalty for poor implementation is not taking full advantage of collaborative technology ROI.

People will continue to travel, resulting in lost savings and productivity reduction. Also, real estate reduction benefits will not be realized because the workers will still come into the office. And those lost benefits can be huge.

If there are many meeting rooms in an organization, it makes sense to create room standards for up to a dozen meeting room types and implement those standards throughout the organization. This will make the technology decision for the rooms simpler, consistent and easier to use and support.  An upcoming blog post about the benefits of creating room standards for multiple meeting rooms will be coming soon.

The benefits of tying your UC platform seamlessly into your room systems are significant. Doing it right requires proper planning, standards, integration and training. If you have any questions about connecting your room systems to your UC platform, contact us.

3 Real-Life Solutions to Ensure Video Conferencing Adoption

I was really disheartened the other day when I heard an IT Director at a major consulting company say that they have video conferencing equipment deployed across the country but they don’t use it much.  It wasn’t that I hadn’t heard this before, it takes much more than equipment deployment to make collaboration technology (in this case video conferencing) catch on.

Being an avid user of video conferencing, I am always baffled about why people don’t use their video conference solution. But I realize that it’s a little like John McEnroe asking why everyone doesn’t play tennis. As a seasoned pro, I always want to get to the bottom of what hampers adoption.

So I asked, “Why don’t people use it?”

His reply: “I blame myself for not really understanding the deployment.  We wanted to bring 3 locations into a single video call and each location has dual screens.  So if I am in Toronto and want to have a call with our New York and San Francisco offices, I want to be able to see New York on one screen and San Francisco on the other screen, but I can’t.  I have to look at them both crammed into one screen. So we don’t use the equipment much.”

Unfortunately for this IT director and many like him, that is a lot of money spent on a wasted video conferencing implementation.  This is a very real problem and probably a lot more prevalent than you might think.

And he was right. There wasn’t much he could do to get the results he was looking for from his video conferencing deployment (technology design & technology strategy are key for adoption). But that doesn’t mean you have to repeat the mistake he made.  You can achieve exactly what the consulting company wanted to with multiple locations on separate screens in the same call.

In fact there is more than one solution but the price difference between them is very different.

First, let’s define the problem.

• Most phone calls are between two people and likewise so are most video calls.  The tech speak for a video call between two people is a “point-to-point” call.  And if you continue the tech speak analogy, a video call with more than two people is a multi-point call.

• Most of the traditional video conferencing vendors – Polycom, Cisco, LifeSize, Radvision, Sony, etc., use a communication protocol called H.323 and when a multi-point call is made using H.323, what happens is that the video streams from each location are “combined” and sent to the other locations as a single stream.

• So in the example above, the Toronto location would get a single video stream sent to it which has the people from New York and San Francisco “combined” into a single video stream.  This single video stream can only be viewed on a single screen – it can’t be split up over two screens.  This practice causes the video images of the remote locations to shrink on the display, dramatically diminishing the value of the video images.

In other words, the screen real estate which the people in the other locations occupy on the screens is drastically reduced.  Screen real estate was critical to the Consulting Company and real estate is critical to a good video conferencing experience – see these blogs for more…

So what can you do to achieve video conference adoption?

Option 1: Have More than One Codec

With all the traditional video conferencing vendors, if you set up each location with 2 codecs and 2 cameras, you then have each codec in the office call one of the other 2 offices.  Then all the participants will be full screen on one of the 2 screens in the room.

Problems with Option 1

Twice as expensive; clumsy call operation; this solution will not scale.  Besides the obvious cost differential of adding a second codec and camera at each location, trying to integrate and operate two separate calls simultaneously is very difficult and most end users will never pull it off.  The scaling problem comes into play if you try to use this solution when adding in a 4th or 5th location into the call.

Option 2: Go Telepresence

This is similar to Option 1 in that there are either multiple cameras or codecs deployed in the Telepresence rooms but the images are stitched together and combined and sent to other locations as a single image to be displayed on a set up that is exactly the same (physical mirror images of each other) at the other locations.

Problems with Option 2

There are no problems with this type of deployment, however they are very expensive.  It takes a lot of technology, network and integration to elegantly pull off the high end Telepresence solutions.  But they are elegant and they work beautifully.  These rooms also tend to become dedicated “Video Conferencing Rooms” and not multi-purpose.  This is not good or bad, just a fact.

Option 3: Use a Different Video Technology

If you move out of the H.323 world and move to a newer video technology, you can deploy room systems that will allow you to use a single processor (codec equivalent) to put full screen images on both of the screens in the Toronto – New York – San Francisco example.  These commercial video solutions will allow for support for two screens with active presence or video on each screen.  The video architectures will let you move beyond 2 screens and go up to 20 screens – Hollywood Squares Plus!!!

Note: This solution would not only have provided the Consulting Company with exactly what they were looking for but it would have cost them less than the video solution they deployed.

Problems with Option 3

There are no problems with this approach except that if you have an existing video deployment like the Consulting Company mentioned above, you have to basically replace the core of the old solution with the new (except for the screens), plus, if you do go beyond a 2 screen system you will need to invest in additional decoders for each of the extra screens beyond the initial two.

There are very good solutions out there to make your video collaboration experiences as good, or better, than actually being there!  Doing it right will increase the velocity of collaboration in your organization.

Stay tuned to the blog for some of the upcoming topics including best options for sharing content and video in a collaborative call.

The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made in Determining Screen Real Estate in a Video Conferencing Room

Commercial grade video conferencing has long been about HD 1080p, QoS, MPLS networks, the right video conferencing codecs and all the other AV equipment that can accompany a video conferencing deployment.  But one of the most neglected investments has been and continues to be, screen real estate.

I find this ironic for two reasons.

First, “Big Screen TVs” have been driving the consumer TV market for the last few years.  Why? Because HD TV on a large screen is more engaging!  Most of us and most of our friends have big screen TVs.  The experience is larger than life and for live sporting and news events, the experience is often better than being there.

So, we have no problem investing in screen real estate for our personal viewing and we see the value it brings to the experience.

Secondly, the primary driver of early video conferencing adoption has been to avoid travel costs.  The theory being that people will have to travel less if they can meet using video conferencing.  But if the video conferencing deployment does not provide images that are large enough, then people will continue to have to travel because they won’t have a good enough experience from the video conferencing deployment.  Even though all the other video conferencing technical problems such as jitter, tiling, etc. may be solved.

Screen real estate is hugely important!

Here are the top 5 mistakes on screen real estate decisions that I consistently see in video conferencing deployments:

1.  The Screen Real Estate Is Too Small

What size screen to have in a meeting room is one of the key technical decisions in designing the AV components of a meeting room.  AV Designers are taught formulae to determine the optimal screen size.  In other words they are making it a technical decision.

Typically There are 2 Dimensions Considered

a) The minimum size of display should be determined by the distance of the farthest away viewer, and

b) The closest participant should not sit so close to the screen so that it overwhelms them.  Like being in the front row of a movie theatre with a huge screen, you just can’t take all of the view in without moving your head. In addition, the brightness will stress you out over time.

 These technical measures are good for helping you figure out a minimum or maximum size for a screen in the room but they don’t consider the “Big Screen TV” factor.  Make the screens as big as you can to make the experience bigger than life.

2.  Trying to save Money on the Overall Cost of the Video Conferencing Solution by Limiting the Screen Real Estate

I see over and over again an executive reviewing a proposed video conferencing deployment and is looking to save a few dollars.  Since most of the other components can’t be compromised, display screens are an easy target to save a couple of dollars.  This may have more to do with the historical cost of displays, but display prices have reduced more dramatically than any other component of a video conferencing deployment.

When you think about the amount of money that is invested to provide high quality commercial video conferencing – the network cost, codec cost, AV components and integration costs, trying to save a few dollars on screen size actually compromises the benefits of video conferencing experience. See this recent blog for more on the benefits of making the image “Bigger than Life”.

3. Having Only a Single Screen for Room-based Video Conferencing

Without a doubt web conferencing (sharing content – WebEx, GoToMeeting, etc) is more prolific than video conferencing and most meeting rooms are used to share PC content in addition to any video conferencing capabilities.  Web conferencing can get a little confusing since you can share content using vendor video conferencing capabilities – see this blog article for more on this.

If the meeting room is designed with a single screen, sharing content will take precedence over seeing people.  So in a room with a single screen, the video portion will be relegated to a small corner of the screen or not be shown at all.  In either case the video portion of the meeting becomes pretty much useless.  The result is that all of the benefits of the visual experience are lost. This is another reason to have to travel for meetings because it won’t be the same as being there.   Avoid single screen deployments so video will not get relegated into the background.

4. Having Multiple Locations on a Single Screen

This mistake is a little less obvious and only comes into play when the call goes beyond a point-to–point call and has multiple locations in a video call – multipoint.  This mistake is also much more prevalent since most single codec deployments will combine the video streams from multiple locations into a single video stream.

But this practice causes the video images of the remote locations to shrink on the display, dramatically diminishing the value of the video images.  In fact, I know of customers who have deployed national video conferencing solutions that are not used for exactly this reason.  This is a very real problem.

I am planning a future blog article to provide more detail as well as some solutions to this problem – stay tuned.

5.  The Image Shown on the Screen Makes the Participants Too Small

Although the video may be on the full screen, the participants are all really small. The image shown of the room is the whole room and in medium and large rooms the participants will all be very small.

This mistake is not the same as mentioned above when the actual video image becomes a small/tiny part of what is displayed on the screen.  This mistake has more to do with the camera view of the room you are in.  It is not really a problem with the screen size itself but the use of the screen to show the participants in the room.

The easiest ‘fix’ to this problem is to teach people how to use the zoom or to program in camera views that are automatically initiated when a person starts speaking, e.g. the person speaking hits a button that turns their microphone on and focuses the camera on them.  This solution works well in a room that is more geared to “Control Meetings”.

For free flowing, highly collaborative meetings the EagleEye II from Polycom provides a very innovative solution – check out my blog on eliminating the “Boardroom Bowling Alley”.

So the next time you are investing in collaboration rooms and technology, invest in screen real estate.  It will greatly increase the velocity of collaboration in your organization!

As always I am interested in hearing your views.  Please leave your comments and join in on the discussion. Contact us to discuss these alternative options such as our commercial grade video conferencing solutions like our HybridX.

Screen Real Estate – a Critical Factor in Making Video Calls As Good As “Being There”

I would like to share an interesting conversation I had with our Montreal location manager, Real Desmarais, on a recent trip to our Montreal office.  The conversation was revealing of just how powerful screen real estate is when you are deploying collaborative solutions between locations.

First, I do use collaboration tools to bridge many of the discussions with our Montreal office, but there are still times where being there is important:

When It’s Better to Be in Person Vs. Video Call

Got It? Now Back to the Main Story…

Over lunch Real and I were talking about the bi-weekly Sales meetings that we hold.  Real is a remote participant in those meetings which are held in our boardroom in Toronto.

Real’s words merit repeating – “I can feel the room react.” Wow! I have always underscored with our customers the critical need to invest in screen real estate in their meeting rooms but his response really brought home that point.

I told him, “You know, I have to say that when we hold the Sales Meetings you have a very big presence in the meetings.  Your face is bigger than life in those meetings [projected, full screen, on an 87” SMART Board] and everyone in the meeting is very keenly aware of your presence and what you have to say.”

Real responded, “Yes, I know.  I feel it.”

I asked, “What do you mean?”

Real replied, ”Even though I am sitting in my office in Montreal at my desktop, every time I move or do anything, I can feel the room react.  So I am very engaged and concentrating on what is going on in the meeting.”

Screen Real Estate in Video Calls

Screen real estate has always been compromised in video conferencing designs and installations and I believe it is one of the biggest mistakes people make when deploying video conferencing in their organizations.

Screen real estate is a great investment that is often not only overlooked, but can become the first point of focus when trying to pare down the cost of a video conferencing implementation.  The cost of LCD screens 5 or 6 years ago may have contributed to this problem and if so it is somewhat understandable.  But with today’s much lower screen costs and available alternatives, saving on screen real estate in a video conferencing room is like preparing for a race and then shooting yourself in the foot before running the race.

What I mean by that is that video conferencing deployments within an organization can mean a sizable investment in network, equipment, deployment, training, etc.  If you try to save money by limiting the screen real estate you are crippling the results you are trying to achieve before you even get started.  That sizable investment also has an even more sizable ROI if the video conferencing facilities are used.  The better the experience, the more the video conferencing equipment will be used.  More screen real estate, means a better user experience.

If you can make the remote participants bigger than life in your meeting, then they will truly feel like they are part of the meeting.  I can’t tell you how many times I hear that remote participants on audio only conferences are either forgotten on the conference call, or want to be forgotten.  When you are using audio only, it is very easy to have the remote participant drift into the background of the meeting.

The same is true with a very small image of video. If the image is too small, it might as well not be there!  And in fact, many people turn it off because it doesn’t add much to the meeting.

Being remote can be “better” than being there for the participants on both sides of the video conference.  And to do that you have to make the experience, Bigger Than Life – see my previous blog What the Movies Can Teach Us About Real Time Collaboration.

Invest in screen real estate in your video conferencing deployments.  This goes for room systems as well as for desktop/laptop usage.  Screen real estate is actually one of the cheapest investments you can make to greatly excel the velocity of collaboration in your organization.

Follow this blog for one of my upcoming and related blogs – “The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made in Determining Screen Real Estate in a Video Conferencing Room.”

3 Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Collaboration in Your Company

Boosting your collaborative capabilities does not have to be a huge investment.  To be clear here, I am talking about real time or interactive collaboration which is a combination of 4 different conferencing technologies – audio, web, video and interactive whiteboards (IWB).

Improving Together Team Lifts Arrow for Growth SuccessA budding franchise business customer (Bud) recently called me in frustration and told me, although he loved Skype, he could no longer use it in his business.  Why?  In a one hour conference call, he would spend half his time managing the technology in the call and every second counts.  The cost of using this popular conferencing technology was a lot more than nothing.  Not only did he spend half his meeting time managing the technology but he lost his focus and his credibility with the other meeting participants – his franchisees.

Bud didn’t have a lot of money to invest in an extravagant room system but he needed a better collaborative experience because he was building his franchise business up and needed to hold regular meetings and more importantly, training sessions with his franchisees who were spread out over a large geographical area.  Traveling in to a central location was not a practical solution. The franchisees could not justify the time out of the field, nor the investment in travel.

He thought that he needed to upgrade to a higher end video system which could handle multiple locations all tied into a stable, single video call. Although this type of solution would certainly enrich the collaborative experience for all the participants, a room based video system for all the franchisees was out of his budget and would not deliver as rich an experience as was available at a much lower price tag.

I suggested a three pronged approach.

First

He needed to enrich the audio experience because audio is “table stakes” for any type of collaboration or conferencing experience. If you don’t have audio, you don’t have a conference, no matter how rich the other conferencing technologies are. I recommended a new Polycom star phone for approximately $500 which is capable of analog or IP telephony. This investment will serve him today (analog) and tomorrow, when he switches to IP.

“Now when we talk, we don’t have to time when we talk because the Polycom system handles the voices coming from both sides of conversation without cutting off pieces of the conversation. It is a much more natural audio experience.”

He was thrilled with his investment because the richness of the sound quality of his conferences went way up. And it was little things that made a big difference.

Second

I told him that he should invest in an interactive whiteboard from SMART technologies. The SMART board provides the richest collaborative experience available. When people discover what they can do with this tool they are amazed.  And a power user looks like a magician on the board when they are conducting a meeting with it.

During a meeting you can use any application that runs on a PC, annotate and capture the image of the annotations on the application as a whiteboard (or flip chart) page. Websites, PowerPoint, Excel, Visio, PDF, etc. At the end of the meeting, everyone gets an email of the PDF of the pages of the meeting notes – instantly!  And the board can be cleared up and ready for the next meeting in seconds by simply hitting the reset button.

These features alone can be worth the investment.  And take note, this capability can be used in any meeting – even if there are no remote participants.  So how did the SMART technology go over with the franchise company? They love it!  But not without going through a bit of a learning curve because he had never heard of or seen a SMART board before I recommended it.  Bud took the upfront training, but it wasn’t until he actually started using it and became comfortable with it, did he really start to appreciate his new collaborative tool and the richness it added to their meetings.

Third

Web conferencing or sharing of the desktop. There are numerous offerings out there that are available from free to a WebEx or GoToMeeting price point of about $40-$50 dollars a month. In this case I recommended the SMART Bridgit software because it provides the features required and provides the ability to share the SMART board screens with any PC, Mac, iPad or Android tablet.  The Bridgit software is particularly good for interactive training sessions, where there are many participants collaborating.

So none of Bud’s franchisees had to go out and buy new technology.  They could use their existing personal technology to actively participate in the meetings being held at Bud’s office.  The Bridgit software provides a richer platform for many-to-many collaboration vs the one-to-many collaboration which is the strength of the GoToMeeting and WebEx software.

Bud has taken a major step forward in collaborating with his franchisees.  His meetings are now focused on doing business and not managing technology.  The experience is richer which allows him to more effectively work with his franchisees and grow their businesses together.

The three quick hitters:

  1. Upgraded audio experience with a new rich and reliable Polycom SoundStation
  2. A SMART board to bring the collaborative experience new and enriched capabilities.
  3. Bridgit conferencing software to allow Bud to share the SMART board with the PCs, iPads, Macs and Android tablets of his franchisees

Bud still wants to add video to the mix in the future and he has some great options open to him:

Upgrading your collaborative experience does not have to be expensive and the returns can be huge.  Putting in the right tools to support and enhance how you work together with people and increase your velocity of collaboration is paramount.