In a work culture dominated by meetings, organizations continue to look to videoconferencing to cut travel by replicating the in-person experiences that employees prefer — or at least make voice conversations more engaging by fostering the trust and improved communication that comes with being able to read the other person’s body language. Today, we published our first Forrester Wave on room-based videoconferencing, evaluating seven vendors: Cisco, Huawei, LifeSize, Polycom, Radvision, Teliris, and Vidyo. The Forrester Wave positions vendors according to their ability to deliver a complete portfolio of videoconferencing solutions and their strategy in the face of several key trends.
 
The videoconferencing market is going through significant change marked by efforts to make the historically cost-prohibitive technology more widely accessible. After a boom period sparked by interest in high-definition quality and epitomized by investments in multiscreen immersive telepresence studios, videoconferencing innovation today is happening on smaller screens like PCs, smartphones, and tablets that workers use in their everyday jobs. In response to this growing interest, vendors not only have to show strategies that account for desktop and mobile applications — they also have to make their traditional dedicated room-based systems easier to deploy at scale. IT decision-makers today are making vendor selections based on their interest in:
  • More-inexpensive systems versus immersive telepresence that provides life-like quality.
  • Compatibility with SIP-based UC environments to provide an integrated user experience.
  • Alternative deployment models — cloud, managed services, software-based, and non-MCU-based — to mitigate the cost and skills barriers to scalable videoconferencing.
I will be holding a webinar discussing this Forrester Wave and trends in videoconferencing on September 19. In the meantime, I open the floor for discussion on this evolving market. What do you think is the future of videoconferencing?