Whitepapers and Case Studies
Avistar sponsored studies by independent marketing research firm Weinhouse Research (www.wainhouse.com):
What Every IT Manager Needs to Know About Desktop Videoconferencing
What Every Business/Line Manager Needs to know About Desktop Videoconferencing
In the introductions to these whitepapers, Ira Weinstein explains that videoconferencing — particularly desktop videoconferencing — is rapidly moving into mainstream business. Several key drivers are behind this growth:
- Cost Effectiveness — Desktop video solutions often cost only a few hundred dollars or less per user.
- Strong Reach — Anyone with a PC and an Internet connection can use desktop video.
- Immediacy — Desktop video solutions support ad-hoc, impromptu communications.
- Convenience — Unlike group video systems that require an expensive room solution, desktop video brings the meeting to the user.
Avistar teams with Frost & Sullivan to deliver monthly Thought Leadership Articles covering the videoconferencing and unified communications market:
Article XXIX September 2010: Frost & Sullivan Research on the Worldwide Videoconferencing Endpoints Market
According to the most recent research from Frost & Sullivan, the worldwide videoconferencing endpoints market reached $904 million in revenues for January through September, 2009, declining by six percent over the same period in the previous year. After a slowdown due to economic pressures followed by growth in Q4, we estimate total revenues for full year 2009 reached $1.25 billion, and that units sold grew by 4.1 percent.
Article XXVIII August 2010: Best Practices from Remote and Home-Based Workers
As more companies go virtual, supporting employees regardless of where they’re based and whether they’re in a remote office, a home office or a hotel, they are reaping the benefits: the ability to hire the best and brightest regardless of where they live; savings on office real estate and other facilities costs; improved retention and employee-satisfaction rates, leading to much better productivity; and cost savings and green benefits from reducing travel and commuting.
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
Article XIV May 2009: Understanding the Videoconferencing Endpoints Market
Article XIII April 2009: Understanding the Videoconferencing Infrastructure Market
Article XII March 2009: Services Support Better Videocommunications
Article XI February 2009: IBM Lotus & Avistar Team Up for Unified Communications, Collaboration
Article X January 2009: Seeing the Recession's Silver Lining
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