Visual Communications: Turning today's hype into tomorrow's reality

Telepresence and HD have impacted the entire video industry, but not always in the intended ways. This session will look at the announcements and market trends of the past 18 months and discuss how vendors and customers are adjusting to new technologies, new market players, and new emphasis on using all resources wisely, including IT investments, human resources, and carbon footprint.

Andrew W. Davis is the founder and managing partner at Wainhouse Research. His current focus is on visual communications markets and technologies. He has published numerous reports on videoconferencing and telepresence markets and strategies and is the analyst responsible for Wainhouse Research's quarterly SpotCheck reports that track developments in the worldwide videoconferencing industry. He holds two degrees in engineering from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. More about Andrew.

Videoconferencing and the World of Professional AV

The videoconferencing and collaborative communications sector needs to interface with the broader a-v industry as users move away from dedicated videoconferencing suites to videoconferencing's inclusion as a facility in meeting rooms and board rooms. That not only means that the kit has to be interoperable and controllable by/via a-v systems, but that the kind of suppliers doing to work are changing as the market develops. As videoconferencing is becoming part of an AV mainstream, this presentation looks at how customers' barriers to usage are being removed by changes in both working practices and technology.

Peter Lloyd is the Editor in chief of AV Magazine. AV Magazine has dealt with the use of AV communications by business, government and education since 1972. He is an active observer, commentator, and writer on professional AV and broadcasting since 1980.

From Communications to Collaboration to Telepresence

The Media-Saturn Group began a Voice over IP rollout in 2004 with the goal of implementing a common telecommunication platform for all stores. In the meantime additional value-added functions, especially in the framework of CRM solutions, have been added to improve the communication between the stores and the customers. At the international level the deployment of 20 CISCO TelePresence systems has enhanced the quality of communications between the international headquarter site and the subsidiary headquarters. This presentation will review the telepresence experience and highlight how telepresence has accelerated business decision processes at Media Saturn.

John-Erik Horn is Senior Manager of Technical Innovation at Media-Saturn-Holding GmbH. He joined the Holding's IT Services company in 2005 and was responsible for the company-wide VoIP project. As Department Manager of Network & Unified Communication Solutions he was responsible for the deployment of 20 TelePresence systems across multiple facilities in multiple countries. John-Erik has more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry with a focus on telecommunications. Born and raised in Miami, he has been living in Europe since 1986 and holds a Dipl-Ing. degree in Electrical and Information Engineering from the University of Stuttgart.

Experiences with Qimonda's Near Telepresence Video Communications Systems

Qimonda is a leading global memory supplier with a broad diversified DRAM product portfolio for a variety of applications. The company generated net sales of €3.61 billion in its 2007 financial year and has approximately 13,500 employees worldwide. Qimonda has access to five 300mm manufacturing sites on three continents and operates six major R&D facilities. This presentation will discuss the Qimonda's rationale and strategy for building the Qimonda Video core cell to support the business's needs for global round table meetings with a near telepresence experience. The innovative system deployed in North America, Asia, and Europe, built as a custom design from standard videoconferencing components, also allows mass communication meetings and promotes the use of visual communications inside the company. The presentation will also cover Qimonda's experiences with near-telepresence, the benefits, and challenges.

Robert Mayer-Klamm is responsible for Architecture and Strategy within IT Global Services at Qimonda, covering definition of standards and guidelines, roadmaps and key strategic projects.

Network Design for Telepresence

Telepresence may be the most demanding application to run on the enterprise network. Careful design and planning is required to ensure both that the network will carry the Telepresence traffic with high quality, and to ensure that the Telepresence traffic does not interfere with existing applications using the same infrastructure.

Deploying a network to support telepresence requires an understanding of the needs of the new systems and the options available for solving those needs. This session will discuss how to create a needs assessment, how to engage service providers to provide the necessary connectivity, bandwidth and QoS, and how to position critical infrastructure components to maximize success and minimize operational expenses.

John Bartlett is a Principle at NetForecast, Inc, a consultancy focused on ensuring application peformance through careful network design. John spent 15 years in engineering roles before moving to a consulting role. John has been working with video conferencing on IP networks since 1996, is a regular speaker at industry events and blogs about real-time traffic issues at www.nojitter.com.

Conferencing Services: Is this a new Peak, the Plateau, or just the Beginning?

Consolidation in the industry suggests that this is the peak in the market for hosted audio and data conferencing and that future growth will continue, but at a slower pace. The growth of customer premise equipment (72% audio port growth in 2006) also suggests we are at a plateau for services as clients bring services in-house. In addition, emerging VoIP, UC, and mobile services may represent a new beginning for new services. This session will explore the current and emerging industry trends for hosted audio and data conferencing and offer potential scenarios for the future of the industry.

Marc Beattie is co-founder and CSP Practice Manager at Wainhouse Research. He is the company's principle analyst for collaboration & conferencing services. Marc focuses on local market knowledge and currently tracks over 100 facilities-based CSPs operating in 21 local markets. He has authored numerous public and private studies on collaboration and is a featured speaker at both company and industry events. Prior to joining Wainhouse Research Marc was an early member of PictureTel and Polycom - holding positions in product management, business development and sales management. More about Marc.

Professional and Standards Videoconferencing: Using the Internet for an Outsourced Service

First was video over ISDN, then came IP, but only inside trusted networks. Today's most enticing approach is to use the open Internet. But certain obstacles remain, including firewall traversal. And many businesses are leery of the desktop video support nightmare, so adoption has been slow. An upstart service provider is implementing a simple outsourced service that will enable anyone on standard VC endpoints or desktop clients to use the Internet with professional results in a trusted environment. The service extends to ISDN and 3G gateways and also offers multipoint, streaming, and recording functionality. This presentation will discuss the inside view of launching such a service, the challenges found, and the feedback from early-adopter customers.

Ernest Companys is the founder and managing director of Techno Trends, an evangelizer for videoconferencing in Spain since 1994. Ernest holds a business degree and is a telecommunications engineer and PDG for IESE.

Video Applications and Services Driving the Video Industry

The main drivers to lift off of the video industry are the ease-of-use (usability) and the shift of the (video) communications paradigm. Ordinary people still do not see how video can enable or enrich their daily lives. This presentation will show how video applications and video services will address ease-of-use and how video applications and services will integrate into business processes.

Raymond Alves, founder of VisionsConnected, has built a portfolio of video applications and managed video services. Raymond joined the video industry in the course of developing a 3G mobile interactive video portfolio. In his previous positions, he managed the broadband and voice group of TNO ICT in the Netherlands. Before this, he was involved with the acquisition of KPN research by TNO. Raymond holds an MBA with a specialization in Management of Technology and a BS degree in mechanical engineering.

3G Video Services: New mobile applications

When UMTS technology supported video calls in early 2002, nobody thought UMTS would provide an interactive communication channel with users. But interactive video allws users to access contents in real time through a simple mobile call.

With the new technology now available, any enterprise can give information and services to their customers through a 3G video call. New services and solutions provide benefits to enterprise intranet managers, value added service providers, and content aggregators. An ASP business model means that 3G video services can be deployed without hosting the contents or developing the contents and with minimal training costs. Examples include banking operations, home surveillance, smart home control, ticketing, entertainment, and general company information access.

Borja Pascual is the Business Development & Marketing Director of Cestel, a company specializing in video application technology.

Social Networking: Ready or Not, It is Coming to the Enterprise

Social Networking is a rapidly growing phenomenon in the consumer online world. Although many enterprises may not realize it, this technology will have some profound implications for businesses of all types. This session will provide a brief overview of social networking functionality and how it can be used in an enterprise. Then we will examine the longer-term implications, the non-trivial risks, and what plans enterprises should be putting in place.

David F. Dines, Wainhouse Research, is one of the few industry analysts focusing on the use of social network technologies by enterprises (Enterprise Social Networking). He has published several reports on this emerging market, including estimates of market size and growth, implications for collaborative applications, and an analysis of the major suppliers. He holds a BS from Cornell University and an MCRP from Harvard University.

The Challenge of Implementing UC

With new software players entering the arena; many are wondering, “do traditional hardware vendors face a threat in their market place”? Is UC the ultimate “airline magazine” article read by CxOs, that now causes their management team a nightmare to justify an ROI. This session will look at the reality of implementing Unified Communications in the enterprise, give an overview of the key players and ideas on creating a business case, and include a practical top-ten guide to moving towards a successful deployment.

Jon Neville is a Practice Consultant with Wainhouse Research with more than 25 years experience in the IT industry, the last 10 at a UK-based multinational company where he specialized in the deployment of IP networks, IP Telephony and Unified Communications. Jon helped this company deploy its global MPLS network and wrote the RFP and business case documents for its worldwide IP telephony upgrade initiative. He has considerable commercial experience negotiating contracts with large telecommunications and IT vendors. More about Jon.

Real-time Collaboration in the Global Enterprise: Security in the New Age

Seamless global collaboration is a key technology required for speedy business decision making in the globalized world economy. But speed is not everything. Maintaining the confidentiality of business communications can be more important than speed and ease-of-use, particularly when intellectual property and business plans are involved. Having your competition share your knowledge at the same time as your colleagues is a recipe for disaster. In the old days of copper cables between phones a connection to the cable was required to breach confidentiality. With IP packets and VoIP in the new age, evil-doers can sniff from anywhere on the planet. So, while collaboration is key, keeping the information secure is even more important. Otherwise an advantage can easily become a disadvantage. This presentation will discuss how a global pharmaceutical company is implementing next-generation voice-video-web collaboration solutions.

Rolf Hansmann is Head of Common Service Technologies Strategy and New Technologies, responsible for Active Directory, eMail, and Team Collaboration Architecture globally at Sanofi-Aventis. His activities involve the infrastructure and application layer to support business communications, collaboration, and workflow improvements. He is now involved with the integration of technologies and services to create a rich business environment for both internal communications and external customer relationship building.

Rich Media Communications and Telemedicine Reality

Telemedicine has been much talked about. It promised so much and yet, arguably, has delivered far short of expectations. How can technology projects be effectively delivered in the medical marketplace to provide working practice benefits and support improved clinical outcomes?

Adrian Hall is a Chartered Engineer with a 1st Class Masters Degree from Nottingham University. After some experience at Unilever, he now works in a highly entrepreneurial environment at Brandon Medical, where he has overseen sales functions for the last 10 years. Recently he has seen an opportunity to develop Medical AV, Media and Transmission as a new product group within the company. This is his current focus, and a key growth area for Brandon.

Listening tools: a way to capture collaborative wisdom - the Synthetron case of online real time large scale and conclusive brainstorms

This presentation focuses on intelligent brainstorming tools to help any company achieve better collaboration results. The author has been involved in collaboration research and the development of collaboration solutions and will cover how Shell, Philips, Fortis, Siemens Canada, and Flemish and Dutch Government organizations have benefited from this unusual approach to large group collaboration sessions. Attendees will gain a new understanding of the role of listening tools in the workplace.

Joanne Celens is CEO of Synthetron. Born in Belgium, she has studied business and international relations (K U Leuven and Johns Hopkins University). After an extended internship and stay in Asia, Joanne started to work for Royal Dutch Shell on different international assignments in trading, marketing and general management for 18 years. She then became a co-founder of Synthetron, at first focusing on business development for the firm and then taking on the role of CEO in 2007.

A new IP-videoconferencing approach to blended-learning at UNED

A new IP-videoconferencing service has been installed since 2007 in the UNED distance-study centers network infrastructure as part of a new approach to blended-learning in the EHEA (European Higher Education Area). UNED has deployed around 60 Education Centers around Spain, equipped with videoconferencing systems, in order to provide distance learning over video and now they are in the phase of adding Bridge Technology and also Streaming and Recording Technology. She will talk about the Case Study and how this is impacting there ROI and productivity.

Ms. Covadonag Rodrigo is the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Technologies applied to the Associated Centers of UNED

From Education to Mobile Workers: Opportunities for new products and services

Bandwidth, processing power, novel devices, and radically shifting attitudes about applications are leading many enterprises to seek new ways to train, teach, and get work done. Yet the new universe of Mobile Learning - M-Learning - offers the promise of smart training - and the danger of over-reaching. What is achievable today and what can we expect in years to come?

Alan D. Greenberg is a senior analyst and partner with Wainhouse Research, focusing on distance education and e-Learning, web conferencing, and mobile applications. He is primary author of the 3-volume Distance Education and e-Learning Landscape, co-author of Personal Mobile Video Communications at the Launchpad, and co-lead analyst on WR's WebMetrics program. A Burke-trained focus group moderator and interviewer, he holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MA from the University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA. More about Alan.

Visual Communications: How tomorrow's applications will differ from today's

Unified Communications and Collaboration platforms provide instant access to on-demand tools designed to make workers more productive, efficient and effective. These platforms are now giving workers even more arrows in their quiver with integration of real-time rich media applications. This session will explore some of the latest technologies available from within commonly used applications at the desktop (IM clients, email and calendaring applications, etc.) and also forecast what users can expect in the next few years.

Stefan Karapetkov is Emerging Technologies Director at Polycom, Inc. where he focuses on visual communications market and technology analysis. Prior to Polycom, he spent more than 10 years with Siemens in product management, new technology development and enterprise product definition. He has been involved in Voice over IP since 1997. Stefan has MBA from Santa Clara University and an MS degree in Engineering from the University of Chemnitz (Germany). He is fluent in English, German, Russian, and Bulgarian.