Telepresence: Are Rising Oil Prices Videoconferencing's Best Hope?

Still, for all the good that HD videoconferencing brings, another area that has to be addressed is real or perceived cost of upgrading your existing network. So each of the companies mentioned above has constructed a way to address the integration of HD and standard definition videoconferencing systems. Tandberg, for example, with its Edge product can join up to 4 video and 3 audio sites with an optional multipoint "MultiSite" functionality, including standard definition videoconferencing, "for the best possible call for each MultiSite participant with rate matching and transcoding".

The final issue we found back in 1999 still remains to be addressed: 48% of survey participants said the lack of bandwidth management technology in the corporate network—in other words, the "we can't risk having video bring everything down" sentiment—would stop them from putting videoconferencing on their LAN or IP network. The mission critical nature of meetings isn't ever questioned, but the use of bandwidth for a videoconference—with the perceived fear that systems will bring down email servers or CRM databases—still is.

Perhaps the hat trick of financial, environmental, and political issues will drive the enterprise market to research the benefits and allay a fear of the unknown that has delayed widespread adoption for more than a decade. This is important to the use of enterprise streaming, too, since once videoconferencing is widely adopted, streaming webcasts on the corporate network will also see a marked increase in usage.