A few days back I had the chance to be part of a virtual meeting that used Polycom’s high-end solution. And I must say that it was truly impressive – call it immersive, if you will – and justified its moniker RealPresence in most respects.
What Polycom has done is created similar conference room ambience in many of its offices worldwide – décor, high-fidelity audio, life-size images…the works. The effect being that executives meeting in those rooms, even though located hundreds or thousands of miles apart, get the feeling that all attendees are really present with them in the same room.
While video and web conferencing have been around for quite some time, putting together a realistic, scenario-based solution is rather new and takes the concept of human interaction enabled by technology to an altogether different level.
In a recent Reuters article, Larry Quinlan, CIO of Deloitte (which has bought Polycom’s solution) remarked that the quality of the latest conferencing systems induces employees “to actually use them”. I’m sure there would be many, many others who’ll think likewise.
The size and growth of the conferencing market already points in that direction. According to Wainhouse Research, the total market for factory revenues of audio, video, and Web conferencing technologies stood at $8 billion in 2008. This is projected to grow to $10 billion in 2012. However, if the new systems do catch on in a big way – and if oil prices spiral upward – the potential market size would be anybody’s guess.
Let’s face it: traveling frequently on business and commuting long hours within the city is having an increasingly taxing effect on people and their productivity. Add to it the rising expenses associated with travel/commuting and you have a compelling case for doing more meetings in a connected environment built on collaborative technology.
This is not to say that replacing most of its travel with high-def conferencing would be easy for a company – after all, the entire setup costs tens of thousands of dollars upfront. So only those organizations that view virtual meetings as a long-term initiative (and have ample cash in their pockets) can reap real business benefits. What’s more, they must still maintain a delicate balance between virtual and in-person communication in order not to lose the human touch – which is so essential to the survival and success of any enterprise.