Whitepapers and Case Studies
Whitepapers
Avistar teams with Frost & Sullivan to deliver monthly Thought Leadership Articles covering the videoconferencing and unified communications market:
Article XXVII July 2010: A look at the Unified Communications Market
Frost & Sullivan recently published the latest version of its annual market study on unified communications. For the purposes of this study, Frost & Sullivan defines a unified communications application as an integrated set of voice, data and video communications, all of which leverage PC- and telephony-based presence information. UC applications are meant to simplify communications for the end user by making it easy to “click to communicate.”
Article XXVI June 2010: Integration is Critical for Unified Enterprise Communications
As more companies deploy a variety of communications and collaboration technologies to an ever-expanding list of employees, integration and interoperability are key to successs. Unified communications combines a variety of real-time and asynchronous communications tools in a single user interface, letting employees access all their communicaitons with a single mouse click. UC apps typically include audio conferencing, desktop video conferencing, Web conferencing, instant messaging, unified messaging and other advanced voice capabilities, and presence information, as well as integration with e-mail and Microsoft Office applications.
Article XXV May 2010: Collaboration is Changing - and Companies Need to Get on Board
As companies become increasingly dispersed, with more and more people working apart from their colleagues, managers and direct reports, the very nature of collaboration is changing. But it’s not just how people collaborating that’s different; it’s the fact that they are more inclined to collaborate in the first place. While much has been made of how social networking is blurring the lines between public and private, it’s also done something else: encouraged information sharing and open collaboration in a way not seen before, at least not among far-flung friends and co-workers.
Article XXIIII March / April 2010: Best Practices for Desktop Videoconferencing Success
Desktop videoconferencing is on the rise, and for good reason. The technology is a cost-effective way to keep remote and home-based workers engaged in company meetings, whether they're exclusively among colleagues or involve business partners and customers. With desktop videoconferencing, employees everywhere can leverage the benefits of video, including the ability to read facial expressions and body language, which lead to a deeper level of engagement. And if the desktop videoconferencing software integrates with room-based systems, remote employees can use the technology to participate in larger meetings even if they don't have access to a conference room.
Article XXIII February 2010: High Definition at the Desktop: Making the Most of the Experience
High definition (HD) videoconferencing has long been the trend for room-based systems. The technology offers a superior visual experience, allowing meeting participants to better see the details of one another’s body language and facial expressions, PowerPoint presentations, and physical models, production parts and devices.
Article XXII January 2010: Avistar Teams Up with Citrix Systems for Video Collaboration
Aside from “unified communications,” one of the biggest buzz words in the tech world today is “virtualization.” Simply put, virtualization refers to technologies that provide a layer of abstraction between computer hardware systems and the software running on them, the separation of the physical from the logical. By providing a logical view of computing resources, rather than a physical one, virtualization lets IT managers trick the operating system into thinking that a group of servers is a single pool of computing resources. And that lets users run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single machine.
Article XXI December 2009: Avistar Videoconferencing Improves OCS Collaboration
Forward-thinking companies are deploying unified communications (UC) to deliver advanced collaboration capabilities to their end users. The goal is to drive productivity, shrink cycle and decision times, and improve the bottom line. Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) has quickly become one of the leading UC platforms, offering an integrated set of capabilities including presence and IM, audio and web conferencing, and even voice. But until recently, it has been difficult for companies to give their OCS users one-click access to an integrated, advanced set of video capabilities as part of a broader UC suite and from within their MOC client.
Article XX November 2009: Desktop Video: Keeping Employees Connected
With the growth of the virtual workplace, more employees are working from far-flung locations, be they airport lounges or home offices. This is good news for just about everyone - studies routinely show that flex-time and teleworking improve not just employee productivity, often by as much as 35 percent. What's more, such policies allow companies to keep their best and brightest, even when life throws them curveballs, like pregnancies, illnesses and moves to new cities or states.
Article XIX October 2009: How Do Consumer Services Affect the Enterprise Videoconferencing Market?
One of the most interesting trends we’re seeing in the enterprise communications market these days is that so much of the leading edge technology is being introduced to the workplace by employees who use it at home and decide they also want it on the job—and then use it there themselves, without any input from IT.
Article XVIII September 2009: The State of the Desktop Videoconferencing Market
Frost & Sullivan has just released our latest look at the desktop videoconferencing market. Desktop videoconferencing is playing an evolving role in enterprise communications, making training, sales, customer support, and corporate communications richer and more cost-effective. But there’s a difference between deploying videoconferencing via room-based systems, and giving enterprise users unlimited access to videoconferencing on their PCs. Desktop videoconferencing poses challenges for network architects and IT managers: Videoconferencing at every desktop can drain bandwidth and create a chaotic user experience if not managed correctly.
Article XVII August 2009: CEBP and Videoconferencing: Beware Potential Pitfalls
Last month, we talked about the value of communications-enabled business processes, or CEBP. Companies can see long-term rewards—including decreased cycle times, increased productivity and significant growth—by injecting communications into their business processes. Conferencing can play a key role in CEBP, and it allows companies to see the benefits of the new processes without having to have deployed a full-blown unified communications implementation.
Article XVI July 2009: Integrating Conferencing with Business Processes
If you’re not tired of communications buzz-words yet, here’s another one to add to your collection: Communications-enabled business processes, or CEBP. The idea behind CEBP is that business processes are better when communications are integrated at key points along the way, making it easier for the right people to get the right information at the right time—thereby saving time and money, making better and faster decisions, and streamlining sales, service, and product cycles.
Article XV June 2009: Weighing the Pros & Cons of Software as a Service
These days, no one can miss the hype around the term “Software as a Service,” or SaaS, in the information technology world. SaaS gives customers access to applications on an on-demand basis, by hosting software in a datacenter, rather than on the customers’ own networks.
Article XIV May 2009: Understanding the Videoconferencing Endpoints Market
Last month, Melanie Turek gave an update on the latest research from Frost & Sullivan on the world videoconferencing infrastructure market. This month, she takes a look at our most recent data on the videoconferencing endpoints market.
Article XIII April 2009: Understanding the Videoconferencing Infrastructure Market
As companies deploy more and more varied videoconferencing systems, they must also deploy a videoconferencing infrastructure network to facilitate videoconferencing calls among multiple endpoints and networks. Videoconferencing infrastructure includes five major product categories.
Article XII March 2009: Services Support Better Videocommunications
Videoconferencing has never been easier to use, or better at delivering on its promise: High-quality virtual meetings that can save companies money and deliver significant productivity gains. But that doesn’t mean companies should take the technology for granted; rather, they should treat it as seriously as they would any other IT implementation.
Article XI February 2009: IBM Lotus & Avistar Team Up for Unified Communications, Collaboration
IBM Lotus has long been a leader in the enterprise communications and collaboration market, and news from Lotusphere, the vendor’s annual user group conference, shows that IBM isn’t letting a down economy stop it from delivering new capabilities and new products. Judging from an audience that was larger than the year before, neither are IBM’s traditionally loyal customers.
Article X January 2009: Seeing the Recession's Silver Lining
While no one would argue in favor of an economic downturn, there are some benefits to the challenges ahead. When it comes to communications, we can expect the new budgetary realities to result in significant changes to the way people work. Those changes will have significant benefits today, and well into the future. This thought leadership piece talks about the shifts in thinking and culture that are taking place, as well as tips on how to start incorporating videoconferencing into the work environment.
Article IX December 2008: Integration and Interoperability: Key to Videoconferencing Success
To be effective, videoconferencing must connect employees inside and outside of the corporate firewall, on any endpoint device and across any network set-up. The December thought leadership article discusses ways to achieve true interoperability.
Article VIII November 2008: The Value of Video Conferencing in Tough Times
Even in tough economic times, investing in new technologies such as videoconferencing can reduce costs while boosting productivity, delivering both short-term benefits and long-term gains. This November 2008 thought leadership article discusses ways to measure the ROI of videoconferencing, helping a company's profit, productivity and people, as well as the planet.
Article VII October 2008: How Do Consumer Services Affect the Enterprise Videoconferencing Market?
The October 2008 thought leadership article discusses how often employees use consumer technology at home and introduce it to the workplace without consulting IT -- such as IM and now videoconferencing -- and the challenges that it causes. It cautions companies to make sure they deploy enterprise-grade applications before their employees overrun corporate networks with unsecured, unmanaged and unintegrated consumer services.
Article VI September 2008: the Time is Right for Videoconferencing
The September 2008 thought leadership article discusses the rapid growth of the videoconferencing market -- revenues for the videoconferencing infrastructure systems market in the Americas region reached an estimated $137.3 million in 2007, growing by a robust 17.9 percent over 2006, according to new research from Frost & Sullivan. The article also discusses the reasons behind this sea change, ranging from trends in virtual workers, companies going green and an uncertain economy.
Article V August 2008: Video, Mobility and the Mobile Workforce
The August 2008 thought leadership article discusses how businesses are supporting a growing number of dispersed, or virtual, workers—people who routinely work in locations separate from those of their co-workers, managers and reports. Desktop video is perfect for mobile users of course, but now executives can get a high-quality videoconferencing experiencing whenever they need it, regardless of where they are.
Article IV July 2008: Video Conferencing Moves to the Desktop
The July 2008 thought leadership article discusses how communications tools including web and video conferencing can go a long way toward allowing employees to meet in real time, share knowledge and ideas, and then act upon their discussions quickly and effectively, all from software on their desktops. But they have to be distributed throughout the organization—and employees must know they’re there as well as how to use them—to be truly effective.
Article III June 2008: The Impact of Collaboration on Business Performance
The June 2008 thought leadership article discusses how communications tools including web and video conferencing can go a long way toward solving the second problem, allowing employees to meet in real time, share knowledge and ideas, and then act upon their discussions quickly and effectively. But they have to be distributed throughout the organization—and employees must know they’re there as well as how to use them—to be truly effective.
Article II May 2008: Today's Communications Applications Demand Network Management
The May 2008 thought leadership article discusses as IT managers deploy next-generation communications technologies, including video conferencing and unified communications, they must consider the ancillary needs such applications require. If they are to deploy unified communications as an enterprise technology, companies must know that their employees can access the applications whenever and wherever they need to—without overwhelming their underlying networks.
Article I April 2008: The Value of Video Conferencing in Unified Communications
The April 2008 thought leadership article discusses when desktop videoconferencing is integrated into a UC solution, users get all the benefits of in-person visual communications: eye contact, body language cues, and the increased comfort, camaraderie and respect that come from interacting face to face. As a result IT managers should plan to include desktop videoconferencing in any UC implementation.
Frost & Sullivan Whitepaper: Leveraging the Value of Unified Communications
This whitepaper explores the value of Unified Communications and PC-based video conferencing:
- As a means to enhance and enable business processes, leverage a distributed worforce effectively and efficiently, and create a networked community of customers, partners and suppliers for enhanced communications
- How companies can leverage the above capability to expand the use of all IP-based communications in the enterprise to the desktop with software
- Demonstrates the need for underlying network management and support
- Discusses the ROI Avistar can and should deliver
Avistar Whitepaper: Avistar Shepherd - Virtualize the Network
Avistar Shepherd provides an intelligent, network-aware application software solution that allows companies to dynamically view and manage the allocation of global network bandwidth across all real time rich media communications, including voice, videoconferencing and streaming media.
- By centralizing the management of bandwidth allocation across multiple vendors and multiple communications topologies, Shepherd provides the basis for reducing the total required bandwidth, thus reducing the current network spend and providing room for growth in their real time communications implementations.
- By accomplishing network bandwidth management through application software, Shepherd is capable of rapidly adapting to the introduction of new communications solutions and therefore reduces the time and cost of implementation. Companies will not have to redesign their networks and add associated bandwidth before implementing new solutions and will therefore be able to leverage their existing investments to enhance their competitive position in the market.
- Shepherd’s ROI is therefore based on its enablement of immediately reducing the network bandwidth spend coupled with the opportunity to speed adoption of deploying unified communications on existing customer networks.
Avistar Whitepaper: Market Needs and Business Value of Unified Communications
Real people are a key component of any business process and, in today's dispersed, global work environment, it's vital that companies' most valuable assets--their employees--are armed with the communications solutions they need to get the job done. Understand more about the future of unified communications, the business value of face-to-face interactions and how to leverage the latest collaborative technology to increase your business results.
Avistar Case Studies
Every day, thousands of people use Avistar to solve complex business challenges faster. With more than 18,000 seats sold in over 40 countries, Avistar deployments are some of the largest in the world. Learn more about how companies are using Avistar to increase productivity and improve business results.
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