Video communications growth accelerating quickly

• Collaboration
• Collaboration Technology

Is your organization prepared?

Video conferencing, live event streaming, Video On Demand, digital signage, security camera systems and video chat are all different forms of video communications. By video communications, I mean a communication that is watched and heard. According to Cisco’s data, video is the biggest and fastest growing segment of all Internet traffic. Does your organization have the infrastructure to adapt?

Video traffic used by Consumers in 2015 is already more than 60% of all Internet traffic and by 2019 Cisco predicts it will grow by 2.5 times, accounting for almost 70% of all Internet traffic.  See Figure 1.

Business video is the fastest growing segment in the enterprise use of the Internet. In 2015 it accounts for just under 8% of the global IP traffic, the 4^th largest category, but by 2019, it will become the 2^nd largest global IP traffic category accounting for 11% of global IP traffic.

Growing by more than 3 times between 2015 and 2019, Business video will be the fastest growing segment of global IP traffic. Business global IP video traffic will grow from 5,711 Petabytes in 2015 to 18,618 Petabytes in 2019.

Why is business video usage growing so much?

Video is, by-far, the most compelling communications method to engage customers and employees. It is also the most effective method for disseminating company-wide information.

Business video communications, in all its forms, should be something that is important to every CEO and CIO.   Unlike the consumer video traffic segment, business video is not dominated by the streaming of entertainment such as movies and TV shows. The business video segment of global IP traffic is made up of the following primary categories of video usage (in no particular order):

• Video Conferencing
• Live Event Streaming
• Video on Demand (VoD)
• Digital Signage
• Security Camera (streaming and VoD)
• Video chat

Each of these segments can be considered as a market on its own, but more and more there will be relationships between these segments, and businesses that are able to easily connect them together will realize advantages over their peers.

Enterprise class capabilities

When an enterprise deploys a new technical capability, they need to make sure that the solutions are up to snuff in order to fit into the enterprise IT world. Security is always the primary concern but it is certainly not the only criterion that a new IT solution will have to pass the test on. Here are some items to consider:

1. Security
2. Deployment requirements
3. Enterprise directory integration
4. Recording capabilities
5. Archiving and retrieval
6. Tools to manage the deployment of new infrastructure
7. Serviceability of the new technology
8. And more ….

Each one of the categories above has a consumer solution(s) which could be used in an enterprise.  These consumer solutions are not enterprise hardened technology solutions because they don’t address the list of items above. Here are some examples:

Enterprise readiness

The data tells us that business video will be bigger than the business use of the Internet for ‘Web & Other Data’ in 2019.  That means that enterprises who have not already done so, need to be ready to provide and manage IT solutions in each of the business video categories.  They will need to ask some questions on behalf of their organization:

1. Do we have a solution or platform for each of the business video categories?
2. Are each of these islands of technology or will they integrate with each other?
3. Do we need an in house solution or a fully managed cloud solution?
4. Does the solution meet our enterprise technology requirements?
5. Who will use the solutions and how will we deploy the technology and train the users?

These are just some of the questions, but some important ones.

Enterprises are already seeing the value of video.  According to Wainhouse, 4 out of 5 enterprises say that video use improves productivity and efficiencies in their organizations.  Further, 73% want their organizations to expand the usage of video.  But as video technology becomes more pervasive, its uses will expand into applications that most people have never heard of.  For example, video magnification will provide new capabilities to organizations.

By magnifying recorded or live video:

1. A Doctor can take the pulse of a patient they are talking to over video while their normal conversation is going on by automatically magnifying the skin of the patient until the pulse can be seen and measured.
2. Security personnel can reproduce entire conversations, even if the people being viewed have their backs turned away from the camera. The conversation the people are having is causing objects all around them to vibrate and that vibration when focused on and magnified can re-create the conversation.

These are just a couple of examples of how one small niche video capability will provide new uses few people ever imagined.

With the explosion of video communications, there will also be a corresponding increase in the requirement to record, archive and retrieve video communications.  Some of these capabilities are already in place and sometimes the services of product specialists are needed.

Over the next few blogs I am going to delve deeper into some of the video communications categories other than video conferencing.

We have written many blogs on video conferencing and I personally use the technology so much that when I have a call that doesn’t have video, it’s uncomfortable because something is missing.  I feel like I am driving a car without my seatbelt on. Here is a partial list of some of our prior blogs related to video conferencing.

1. The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made in Determining Screen Real Estate in a Video Conferencing Room
2. Screen Real Estate – a Critical Factor in Making Video Calls As Good As “Being There”
3. Pros and Cons of Using Skype for Business Video Conferencing Calls
4. 5 Myths of Telepresence and what they mean to your business
5. What Conferencing Technologies Should be Available in Our Meeting Rooms?
6. Honey – They Seriously Shrunk the Cost of Telepresence!
7. What is your Organization’s Attitude to Video?
8. Has video conferencing crossed “The Chasm” to the mainstream market?
9. The Rise of the Virtual Meeting Room
10. Video in the Cloud
11. Transforming the Healthcare Collaborative Ecosystem

Stay tuned.

Contact us at ET Group if you have any questions about our collaboration technologies and how we implement them.