Conferencing technology moves beyond the boardroom.

Traditional use wends its way to a day-to-day management tool.

Robert Lumsden, telecom manager of The Haskell Co. in Jacksonville, FL, wanted to give people in the engineering/architectural firm's regional offices better access to company training and monthly operations meetings held at headquarters. The company typically has multiple concurrent construction projects across North and South America. It employs 600 in its Jacksonville headquarters, and as many as 600 more in the field at any one time.

After implementing videoconferencing equipment to satisfy the initial meeting requirements, he discovered other uses for the technology in the hands of field technicians. "We have added other uses, like troubleshooting equipment," says Lumsden. "We can roll the video equipment into a switch room and troubleshoot equipment remotely."

Lead technicians in the home office location can provide interactive instruction to technicians in remote locations, spreading the positive influence of their experience across multiple projects without traveling. Being able to see exactly what a technician in the field is working on offers an opportunity to give immediate feedback and direction.

A SWITCH TO IP

The use of videoconferencing as a day-to-day management tool is new. Until recently, the traditional method of connection was the use of a switched ISDN network and dedicated, expensive equipment. "This has caused videoconferencing to be used primarily as an executive tool," says Steve Pomeroy, senior product manager for IP/VC at Cisco Systems. "We see IP videoconferencing as shattering that mold, because the cost of videoconferencing over an IP network is much less."

"The fastest growing way of connecting conferencing devices with enterprise is IP," says Craig Malloy, senior vice president and general manager of video communications at Polycom. "If you have a well-constructed data network, even with remote sites, within the company, running a video call over IP is zero incremental cost. Whereas, with the circuit-switched way, there are access charges."

The cost of provisioning the network service providers, monthly access fees for ISDN, per-minute charges, and the high cost of the equipment in the range of $5,000 to $20,000 per end point, has kept videoconferencing from being a broadly based application. The newer IP conferencing devices, designed to be used on a more spontaneous basis than existing ISDN systems, create a combination of affordability and accessibility.

Pomeroy notes that videoconferencing is moving from being a point application to becoming a network service. He says people were buying it for a specific purpose, such as a monthly staff meeting, but are now developing it as part of a larger communications network built on the enterprise IP network.

Malloy agrees. "We are seeing a big shift toward IP communications. That is the fastest growing segment." He adds that ever-present communications will not happen "until it runs over a converged IP network."

INVESTMENT PROTECTION

To deploy an IP videoconferencing system into an enterprise, and to realize savings from it, often means integrating it with existing ISDN equipment that the company has already invested in. Specific gateways are available for this, linking H.320 equipment to H.323 equipment, and, in some cases, eliminating the need for multiple ISDN lines and their related expenses.

"Ninety percent of Cisco's customers who are doing videoconferencing are doing it in a mixed environment," says Pomeroy. "They are looking to either augment their H.320 ISDN network by adding H.323 devices, or, over time, are replacing the ISDN connectivity with IP connectivity. The business drivers for that are cost savings and management of the network infrastructure."

Converting, replacing or upgrading existing systems to use IP allows outside ISDN access to be centralized through a single gateway, reducing the number of expensive lines that are scattered throughout the network. For companies that already have an investment in significant IP bandwidth links overseas, videoconferencing data can be sent to make a local ISDN connection on the other side. This saves the company the high cost of high-speed international ISDN connections.

Another benefit for enterprises that have invested in upgrading their networks is that IP conferencing equipment can now be located wherever an IP connection exists, bringing the experience to the user, instead of making him travel to a designated location.

IP CONVERGENCE CHALLENGES

A report from Perey Research predicts strong growth for IP-based videoconferencing over the next four years, with up to $1.6 billion in product sales in 2003. There are still some technical challenges, however, that the industry faces in running videoconferencing over a converged IP network.

Pomeroy stresses that routers have to be able to recognize the compressed video and audio packets, and to treat them differently at points of congestion, such as where the network goes from a high-bandwidth backbone connection into a WAN connection. "Videoconferencing over the Internet is not feasible at the moment," says Pomeroy. "There is no quality of service (QoS). You have no guarantee when your IP packets are going to arrive."

Bandwidth is a concern, with each videoconferencing stream typically taking 384 kbps, plus an additional 10% to 20% for IP networking overhead. With the recent emphasis on enterprises upgrading their networks, however, this concern has largely been met. Switched 10Base-T networks to the desktop and switched 100Base-T or gigabit backbones are adequate for videoconferencing, if proper usage policies are placed, so that not everyone is making calls at the same time.

Additionally, there are design challenges when making connections outside the corporate firewall. "In an environment where you need to go through a firewall," says Pomeroy, "there are a number of ways to accomplish it with the tools at hand."

Ease of use is another challenge, not only in the tools used to initiate a conference, but also in how to keep track of people behind network address, translation devices. A well-designed dial plan that numbers videoconferencing end points in a way that they can be easily integrated with gateways and existing telephone systems can make tracking people easier. A poorly designed dial plan causes complexity that prevents the system from scaling properly.

"We expect videoconferencing networks to scale within an organization to 10,000 to 20,000 end points," continues Pomeroy. "If you don't think about it up front, then you have to re-engineer the whole thing later."

A BALANCE OF BOTH

With all the challenges still facing converged networks, the transition from switched-network conferencing to IP-based conferencing is far from complete. WAN communications in the U.S. generally are no longer distance sensitive, with most charges being access related. Affordable switched-network access can motivate companies to consider IP videoconferencing as merely a supplement to existing switched-network conferencing, choosing to utilize both methods to carry conferencing data.

Such is the case with The Haskell Co. Depending on the circumstance, it uses the o method that is most convenient. "It is pretty cheap," says Lumsden. "Once you have the equipment--and that has come down in price substantially--the per-minute cost is about a dollar per hour. If we do it through our own IP network, it is free. It just depends on where we are."

Impacting the workflow in a direct and positive way, and doing it economically, is what videoconferencing is all about. The next step in getting broad adoption of videoconferencing over IP, according to Pomeroy, is for the Internet to offer QoS. "We need more of the service providers offering IP services to provide economical priority bandwidth services. One by one, the barriers to making the technology deployable, scalable and economical are getting knocked down," says Pomeroy.