Print

Comment

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

Reddit

Twitter

A few years back the concept of videoconferencing in India was relatively new. The adoption was limited to large corporate houses. Things have, however, become more democratic now. Traditionally, Audio-Video (AV) conferencing has long served as a niche market, mostly for applications in telemedicine, big conferences in corporations, and education. Today, however, a myriad of players are providing services in various applications like sales, training, recruitment, corporate/CEO broadcast, product roll-outs, and event launches, promotions, distance education, legal proceedings, remote participation in seminars, remote trouble shootingyou name it.

Understanding the Growth Drivers
The decrease in cost of bandwidth, favorable economy of the country and the adoption of the IP platform augured well for the growth of videoconferencing infrastructure systems. The government has taken steps to encourage videoconferencing. The Supreme Court has passed a rule where recording of testimonies through videoconferencing will be allowed under Section 285 of the Amendment Bill. This will positively spur demand for both videoconferencing endpoints and infrastructure systems in the judiciary sector in the coming years.

India is undergoing globalization, resulting in a lot of to and fro across various countries and within the country. Just imagine the pain and the complications of climate change or long distance travel for, maybe, just a day, to attend a meeting! Outsourcing is another major driver, on the corporate front, especially in specialized services that are helping the videoconferencing market to flourish in India. Improved communication between partners has resulted in reduction of expenses by doing away with the need for costly and inefficient travel.

Another trend is the use of teleworkers, which are enabling companies to save on real estate costs. At the same time, employees save on commuting time, expense, and energy, which has resulted in higher employee retention by offering employees much improved work-life balance.

AV conferencing has increased corporate participation in environmental protection by reducing hydrocarbon emissions that result from lot of physical to-and-fro for meetings and other official visits via airlines and other modes of travel.

Further, videoconferencing also promotes electronic communication, which helps reduce paper use by eliminating the need to print out meeting agendas, presentations, etc. Most enterprises, large or small, understand that collaboration solutions can improve their competitive position by enabling dispersed teams to work together more efficiently, by providing a richer and more intimate communications environment for customers, partners, and prospects, and by making training and e-learning more convenient, effective, and less costly.

What the Technology Beholds
With the growing adoption of IP in the Indian market, more companies are expected to upgrade their equipment to IP-enabled systems, as well as invest in gatekeepers and advanced management tools. It is expected that non-bridging products will grow at a faster rate than standalone bridges during the maturity phase of the videoconferencing market. As the industry starts using IP networks, demand for software-based bridges and better videoconferencing infrastructure will also increase in tandem.

Bridges contribute over 90% of the total revenue of the videoconferencing infrastructure market as the cost and utility associated with them is high. It is also anticipated that this trend shall continue throughout the period in review. More vendors continue to strengthen their core products with enhanced bridging capabilities. The adoption of IP platforms has started leading to the demand for software-based bridges, which will rise. This will result in lowering the demand of hardware bridges as software bridges are cheaper than standalone bridges. Bridges with embedded gatekeepers are common in the market now, but shall stay in popularity with the increase in adoption of IP platform in the coming years.

The 3G gateway has yet to gain popularity in the market as the 3G infrastructure in India has not been fully developed. Presently, gatekeepers have a small share in the infrastructure market and most vendors bundle gatekeepers with bridges and gateways. But, with the adoption of IP platform and the need to improve IP and bandwidth management, there will be an increase in the share of separate gatekeepers.

As the videoconferencing infrastructure market in India becomes more mature in the next 7-8 years, the demand for advanced management tools, which are integrated with enterprise solutions, will rise. Large multinationals in the banking and financial and IT sectors shall be the first movers to adopt the advanced management tools in future.

IP networks are the key to the successful adoption of videoconferencing solutions in the future. With the advent of IP networks, the aggregate effect of the factors mentioned above are likely to result in lowering the share of standalone bridges and gateways in the total revenue structure of the videoconferencing infrastructure market.

The latest trend in the market is the migration from Standard Definition to High Definition. The factor that is responsible for this transition is the transfer from ISDN to IP technology. The popularity and awareness of HDVC is increasing in all sectors, doesnt matter whether it is a large enterprise or an SMB. In the beginning, the companies in the SMB segment were apprehensive about investing in this technology, because they took it as an additional expense to buy this technology and to change the existing infrastructure. Now the people from all the sectors and verticals have gradually started adopting this technology in India.

According to an estimate, once the adoption starts from SD to HD, the transition is expected to take place at the rate of 40% per year. The market is growing at the rate of 30% per year.

With the inclusion of High Definition (HD) video, the days of grainy and blurry videoconferencing are now past. Users feel as if their video counterparts are sitting right there at the same table with them. But, HD systems arent for everyone. It makes sense in some specialized segment like telemedicine, education, and, maybe, Fortune 100 executive boardrooms. HD systems also open new avenues in the entertainment world, and speed-up their business. Now there is no sending tapes back and forth, videoconferencing is interactive, so a director can look at the actions of an actor simultaneously, and because of the fantastic broadcast quality, can easily assess the actor.

HD AV conferencing is an emerging market right now and may become very large in the future, especially when high defination gets into the desktop and does not need special rooms to do the conferencing.

Sandeep Sharma
sandeeps@cybermedia.co.in

Page(s)   1