As mentioned earlier IP telephony sales grew 46% in 2006. The telecommunications market is changing and this calls for scalable and interoperable solutions. The growing numbers of optimized packet platforms are replacing circuit-switched platforms. This is a clear indication that IP networks are a significant factor in the telephony carrier marketplace. IP for voice and visual communications enable service providers and telcos to offer a variety of features and services with rapid time-to-market and at significantly lower costs.

Users are Loving it
Apart from convenience and cost saving factors, the key technology drivers for Web-based conferencing are the last-mile connectivity and availability of dependable broadband bandwidth. The webconferencing market in India is said to be maturing, as broadband availability goes up and prices come down. It can be said that this market has reached the point of inflexion.

Today, users are demanding collaborative communications that are user friendly and relevant in their everyday lives. And that goes for certain domestic users as well. Accessing and sharing of information plays a vital role in corporate meetings, and collaboration enables an easy sharing of any type of information, thus instantly arming the participants with necessary knowledge and skills.

Collaboration has been happening online for a long time through email, Usenet, etc. But it is getting dramatically easier, more prevalent, and powerful. The software enabling collaboration is fast improving and at the same time Web users are getting to be more familiar in terms of using collaborative tools. While the telephone and email continue to be effective communications tools, e-collaboration technology reduces non-productive expenses, and accelerates work cycles. Web collaboration is proving its value in terms of productivity increase and cost reductions right across the enterprise. More and more enterprises are realizing how much e-collaboration is re-shaping the way work is done and the significant value it delivers.

Towards Unified Conferencing
Organizations are looking for a converged solution that provides effective voice and videoconferencing services. The answer lies in unified conferencing. The limitations of separate conferencing solutions come in the form of substantive differences in connectivity, features, and interfaces. Technical barriers must be overcome to be able to connect from anywhere, anytime to a unified, feature rich, highly productive meeting involving people located remotely. Flexibility to support voice, video or unified conference that is most appropriate for the customer application with a uniform set of features and interfaces is also important. A unified conference seamlessly connects a mix of voice and video endpoints on different networks to one conference, and on one platform that provides each conference participant with the same conference experience.

Unified conferencing supports ISDN video, IP video, PSTN voice, VoIP, and mixed voice/video conferences simultaneously on one platform, with the same set of conferencing features, one set of end-user interfaces, and one management application.

The webconferencing market is expected to grow significantly as it migrates from standalone conferencing to fully integrated suites of collaborative communications. While the adoption and usage of webconferencing is expected to gain momentum over the next several years, the integration of discrete communication applications into unified communication and collaboration products are likely to blur the lines between webconferencing and other technologies, such as audio and videoconferencing, instant messaging, unified messaging, on-line shared workspaces, and document management solutions.

Sufia Tippu
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

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