posted 11 December 2002 11:30 AM               

Yes, I agree that effective marketing can make an impact on the market penetration of a product such as video conferencing. However, related to your two examples, Voice Over IP and PC’s, there is a distinction to be made.

I do not think that VOIP has “taken off”, although it has made inroads. While Cisco certainly pounded the pavement with their VOIP evangelism, the reason people listened was because of potential cost opportunities and the product finally had viability. As for PC’s, I think people knew they needed one when the value proposition made sense. As soon as applications were developed that made it justifiable to purchase a PC and a printer, consumers and businesses made the logical leap.

Where I may respectfully disagree is with the premise that video needs some sort of slick relentless marketing campaign to convince users they need it. The problem is not that they do not know about video, but that other priorities take precedence. Think about it on a disaster scale of 1-100, where 100 is the worst. If a Fortune 100 company’s WAN went down, they would probably rate that 95-98 on the disaster scale. If all their email servers were to go down, that may rate 92-96. If all their video conferencing went down, that would rate 10-35 perhaps. So, I think it is a matter of priorities.

So then what we are really saying is: how do we make video conferencing more of a priority? Agree?

Joe

posted 11 December 2002 12:06 PM               

VOIP is a great key I beleive to the success of VTC. VOIP creates financial incentives to create networks and support systems for time sensitive data over IP networks, it also creates people in the IS department who are advocates(we hope) for time sensitive data.

Those same advocates are the folks who can spearhead the VTC over IP experience to the corporate world, lets not forget 15 years ago data networks and email were a novel idea, Bill Gates famous quote about the internet being a fad and all. Today no company can live with out data networks and they have created huge infrastructures to facilitate there use.

We must look at that model and find a way to nurture VTC's to that same level.

Thanks for writing, I am finding this very informative and inciteful.

posted 17 January 2003 11:44 PM               

Who needs a $7000 Tandberg videophone. Buy a multimedia flat screen and put D-link on top for under $1000. I have been told by a D-Link manager the lens is not right for desktop distance but may change in the future.
Under "market barriers" I discussed the revolution that will happen in our biz over a half a year ago. A few people questioned my $250 -$400 for an appliance prediction. D-link is at $300.

D-Link is just the begining. Others will join in with new compression standards with twice the quality of H.263. The future has never looked so bright.

Only problem is infrastructure hurdles and the lack of eye contact from a perimeter mounted camera. Our firm builds both desktop and group eye contact displays to solve this problem and thereby substantially improves the conferencng experience. Numerous others are slowing working out the kinks in the infrastucture road.

posted 18 January 2003 02:45 AM               

I too have a D-Link but I find the quality poor compared to the Via Video and of course the Higher end Polycom and Tandberg units. No echo cancellation and no PTZ Camera make it a tough choice for rooms of any size.

Enterprise customers need to have rooms that work exactly the same all over the world so they don't have to train 50,000 users X number of times depending on the number of rooms.

Again I feel that the value is in making the equipment a central part of the room design and creating a system where the difference between a local meeting and a VTC meeting is connecting the call, after that if you switch to it in the local meeting the VTC just follows. D-Link over Netmeeting or Whatever has no way of allowing that level of integration at this time.

Everyone seems to be caught up on price. Value to the cutomer has nothing to do with price, if that were the case none of them would own a Data network because they cost a bunch, but they provide a lot also hence they are a good value.

My Two Cents

posted 31 January 2003 12:47 PM               

Hopefully this is slowly changing.