There's no question that video conferencing is well on its way to becoming a routine business tool. It is already common in enterprises, thanks in large part to Cisco's success in pushing high-end telepresence systems into the largest organizations. But it's also growing rapidly among SMBs, largely due to the increasing availability of affordable cloud-based services. And for companies of any size, all signs point to more of the same. Case in point: A new advance by ScienceLogic Inc. has serious potential to accelerate both enterprise and SMB use.
The advance involves extending the capabilities of ScienceLogic's IT operations and cloud management platform so it can handle video conferencing-specific equipment and issues. The basic platform provides enterprises and service providers with various features and functions for managing the key components of their IT infrastructure, including servers, networks and storage devices. It supplies everything from information about devices and components to fault and event management to service desk tools and automation to performance monitoring. One of its key strengths is its ability to deal with a variety of vendors and equipment types. Another is that it was designed from the ground up for multi-tenancy. That makes it particularly useful for cloud services which often host multiple customers' IT operations on the same equipment.
The extended capabilities are important because video conferencing places unique demands on organizations' technical infrastructure. Maintaining the service quality that such real-time services depend on is particularly challenging. Video conferencing can consume significantly more network bandwidth than would otherwise be necessary. It also may require the ability to allocate bandwidth according to class of service while keeping a handle on factors like jitter and delay. And it employs specialized equipment, from endpoints such as telepresence setups and video phones to MCUs (multipoint control units, which combine separate video streams into multiparty conferences).
In short, adding video conferencing significantly increases the number of factors IT departments have to keep track of and worry about. The added capabilities of the ScienceLogic platform give them the tools they need to deal with such factors, including the ability to handle Cisco/Tandberg TelePresence, Polycom and LifeSize gear.
More broadly, the addition also illustrates the extent to which video conferencing has become a corporate necessity. So deeply has it become entrenched in business activities that considering it as an add-on to existing IT technology is no longer practical. At least in ScienceLogic's eyes, treating it instead as a basic building block of corporate infrastructure is becoming the only sensible approach. That means planning for it and supporting it at the most fundamental level.
Erik Rudin, ScienceLogic's director of product management, also notes that enterprise video conferencing is changing. In particular, there is less emphasis on room and telepresence systems, and more on desktop endpoints. That puts enterprises more in line with SMB video conferencing trends. ScienceLogic's new capabilities help accelerate those trends too. A key element making SMB video conferencing possible is the availability of cloud-based services. And the multi-tenancy capabilities that have been part of ScienceLogic's platform from the beginning make cloud-based video conferencing easier for providers to implement.
Hi Robert,
Last year, when I was at the Channel Partners Conference in Vegas, everyone and their dog was out with SAS (software as a service) everything, even including cloud based desktops which a business could add and subtract as they added and subtracted employees. Many of these had integrated video conferencing, as well as many other features.
I think the days of simple add-ons, like video conferencing, are about over, except in small business. Especially with everything now being cloud based. Why would a company keep a full blow IT department, when they can just keep enough people around to plug in the new desktops?
With ScienceLogic already based in the cloud, they'll have an easy time bundling their services with those provided by the SAS companies. Which will make it way easier to sell, and way cheaper to set up, than the other way... (Hey Mr. CEO, can I stick $100K worth of equipment in your telecom vault? Sure it'll be out of date by the time we install it... LOL)
Greg
Posted by: Greg | 03/28/2012 at 10:03 AM