Vox takes aim at video conferencing market « Broadcasting « MyBroadband Tech and IT News

Tom Manners

July 25, 2011

Vox Telecoms has officially announced the release of a dedicated teleconferencing platform – Vox Pureview

Local telecoms operator Vox Telecoms has officially introduced a dedicated video conferencing division, known as Vox Pureview.

Although the company is well known for its focus on the video conferencing market, particularly with products such as Vox Eyeris, Vox Pureview focuses solely on the widespread support of this technology with a strong focus on small to medium (SME) clients.

Significantly, Vox Pureview will enable users to access teleconferencing facilities on a number of platforms including Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Support for BlackBerry and Android devices will also be delivered in coming months. Vox Pureview also supports a wide array of legacy hardware.

In addition, the technology also offers Scopia support. This allows users access to a suite of applications developed by Radvision which offer video conferencing, content sharing and presentations on widely accepted video conferencing equipment, tablet PCs, cellular handsets, desktop and laptop computers.

Price Barrier

Although teleconferencing is not new to the South African business market, price was a significant barrier for small to medium businesses, said executive head of the division, Gene van der Walt. “Very few businesses can afford to spend a million Rand on a state of the art boardroom. Vox Pureview is the obvious solution because it can be tailored according to individual business needs.”

To combat this, Vox has made Pureview available on a rental contract should customers prefer this. In this instance, businesses rent the relevant teleconferencing equipment needed to meet their needs on a fixed term basis.

Key to the challenge of pricing structures is Vox Pureview’s hosted solution, which allows businesses to access advanced teleconferencing services without having to invest in costly network bridging infrastructure. Through this, clients can connect with remote branches or customers through the Vox bridge infrastructure, without compromising security.

This offering is particularly cost effective. Customers can set up a ‘virtual room environment’ for a once off set up fee of R2,500 coupled with a monthly subscription of R250. According to van der Walt, usage is billed per hour. “An SD (standard definition) call of one hour, which would be suitable for most businesses, is billed at R150. This means that executives can have weekly meetings for roughly R850 a month excluding set up fees.”

Users who do not have access to the Vox Pureview offering will also be able to take part in teleconferencing sessions through the use of meeting requests facilitated by Scopia. These prompt the receiver to download the software and insert the correct information to join the meeting.

Security

When questioned regarding the benefit of Vox Pureview over a free video conferencing service such as Skype, van der Walt stressed that Vox offers “the kind of security that Skype simply does not”. Vox Pureview is also supported by 128 bit encryption security through Scopia.

As an added benefit, Vox has partnered with Smart Technologies to supply interactive whiteboards which integrate with the Pureview platform. This allows any information that may have been edited during the session to be sent to all participants upon conclusion.

In addition, users have the option to record all teleconferencing activity that takes place through Vox Pureview to be viewed at a later stage.

How to Make Virtual Conferencing Work: 10 Steps | BNET

By Wayne Turmel | March 14, 2011

For years, we have been hearing about how the next logical step in virtual communication is the “virtual conference”. Some people love the idea, some hate it. While the technology has taken great leaps in the last few years, it’s still not very common.

I look at virtual conferencing the way I look at the flying car or owning a boat. The idea sounds cool, I daydream about it, but the cold hard realities make it impractical. Recently, I saw an article on the Hypergrid Business blog that was written by someone at the 3D, Virtual Conferencing company Altadyn. They identified 10 concerns that need to be addressed by the industry for widespread adoption in the enterprise space.

Let’s hear what you think. I believe that they’re all valid, and some of them represent much bigger barriers to entry than they’re copping to. That’s natural enough; if your marketing folks aren’t optimists they need to find another gig.

The listed concerns are theirs, the smart-aleck editorial is all me.

1. The software download issue- IT continues to struggle as an industry with whether to allow people to download plug-ins and software to allow meetings, particularly with people outside the company.
2. Firewall Issues When are we going to get past “we have all the communication tools we need, as long as we don’t have to talk to customers, vendors or anyone who doesn’t work here”?
3. Bandwidth- Anything involving video is going to suck up a lot of webspace and bandwidth. This is not only on the connection but whatever computer you’re using. If you’ve ever seen what your kid’s version of the SIMS does to your computer performance you see the issue. Actually, at the rate bandwidth and ease of use is expanding, this will be one of the first barriers to fall.
4. Support for multiple platforms. This is more than just the “PC vs. Mac” debate. As people learn to work on the go, fewer are using true “computers” and going to tablets, smart phones and lord only knows what we’re going to have next. I (for the moment) discount the rumors that Google is looking at an implanted chip.
5. User generated content. One of the advantages of these tools is the ability to integrate all kinds of content (documents, video, applications) and show it to lots of people at the same time. The current problem is that you can’t just drag and drop existing content into most platforms… it’s a hassle.
6. Scalability- If you use one tool for small meetings and then another for big events, you’ll always have problems getting people comfortable and up to speed.
7. Learning Curve- Now we’re hitting the big barrier. These tools still take time to learn, and most of us have better things to do than spend half an hour learning to use a tool we’ll only use for one event. I’m not saying we shouldn’t, I’m saying most of us (including me) won’t. If it’s something I’m going to use every day, that’s one thing. If I’m going to spend time being frustrated so I can attend a virtual event that used to get me out of the house to Orlando every year I’m even less motivated–and I’m not even that crazy about Orlando.
8. Simple Avatars- Why does it take so long to set up an online persona that bears no likeness to who I am. Proponents of these tools like to point out how we can interract with other avatars and that’s great, if everyone on your team is a vaguely-30s, annoyingly thin, clean-cut white (or darned near) person. The only time an online persona that’s better looking and more impressive than the real person would be useful is on sites HR won’t let past the firewall. Or so I’ve heard.
9. Walking and turning-Unless you spend a lot of time on video games(and I haven’t) navigating the virtual conference hall is still annoying. Why does it take 3 buttons and carpal tunnel syndrome to get to the content I want to see. More than that, I don’t see the fun or the business application in flying from place to place. (Seriously, how good would a conference session have to be that you wished you could literally fly to it?) It’s not fun to me, and it’s time consuming and annoying to a lot of people.
10. Virtual behavior- It’s interesting that one of the concerns vendors have is people getting rambunctious and acting inappropriately in these sessions. Seriously? Most of us can’t get our team involved enough to stop answering email. I think this shows how little the people who passionately love this technology relate to those of us who want to use just enough to get our work done.

You’ll notice that the first six challenges are technical. I have no doubt they’ll be solved quickly (at the current rate maybe by the time you read this article). The last four have to do with human motivation and behavior…and I suspect Google will have that implant long before some of these challenges are properly addressed and overcome.

5 Things That Make Virtual Meetings Work (Or Not) | BNET

By Wayne Turmel | April 18, 2011

Virtual meetings are a fact of life for most of us, at least occasionally. Most of them are modestly successful. They accomplish the bare minimum–information is shared, decisions get made and that’s about it. What makes a good webmeeting work when others don’t?

Recently INC. magazine ran an article on the 5 factors that make a good virtual meeting. The full article is a decent, if way too basic, introduction to the topic. Here are the five factors they identified:

• Prepare for the meeting. Really. The fact is that running a meeting at the best of times is hard work, but much of it comes naturally to us out of habit. Online, you need to make sure people can connect early, make the best use of the time you share and stay engaged. An agenda with easy links and instructions for the technical end of things is a must. One good tip the article mentions is to use a co-facilitator to handle the technology while you run the meeting. That’s a great idea.
• Use the right technical tools and technology. The best advice here is to think small- use only the amount of technology necessary to accomplish the desired meeting outcome. You don’t need high-tech video conferencing to solve some problems, and the phone won’t be as powerful as true collaboration tools. Form follows function.
• Stay focused. This advice is for both the audience and the presenter. Among the tips is the most obvious but also the most abused- single topic, short meetings are far more effective online than long rambling ones. People have a limited capacity to maintain attention and there area lot of distractions out there. Make it easy on each other by controlling background noise using the mute function on the phone. One small quibble I had with the advice is that it said to mute all phones and use the chat feature instead. That’s often a good compromise, especially with large groups, but the vocal/audio component of communication is important. With a little practice and willing participants you can facilitate discussion by call on folks and letting people unmute their phones when they want to participate.
• Use good meeting etiquette. Virtual meetings have different dynamics than live meetings. For one thing it’s easier to let yourself start answering email and do other tasks that you’d never do if you knew the meeting leader and other participants could see you multitasking.
• Engage your participants. If you held a meeting in the conference room and said, “Okay, I want you not to talk to each other or to me. Sit there quietly and hold all questions until the end while I club you to death with this PowerPoint presentation”, how well would that go over. (If that sounds like your regular meetings you have larger problems to be dealt with another day). Yet that’s how many presenters run virtual meetings. In the name of managing time they restrict their ability to truly interact and leverage the participation of attendees.

One thing that’s not listed in the article, but absolutely needs to be mentioned is the necessity for people leading virtual meetings to learn the ABCs of the tools before they attempt to solve problems or lead important discussions . 

As I point out in “10 Steps to Successful Virtual Presentations”, fewer than 25% of people who are asked to lead virtual meetings and presentations ever receive any practice or coaching with the tools–The first time they use them is with innocent victims on the line, and then people are surprised that the meetings don’t go smoothly. You can’t run a decent meeting if you’re worried about which button to push. It’s not fair to the presenter or the participants. All meeting leaders should know the basics of good web presenting before they’re expected to run high-stakes presentations and meetings.

Do You Need a Webinar, Webcast or Videoconference? | BNET

By Wayne Turmel | June 20, 2011

You’re going to talk to your team or your whole company with PowerPoint, video, maybe there’s a handout. Should you use a webinar? Webcast? Virtual event? Or videconference?  Choosing the right tool can be overwhelming.

First, there is no consistent language.

What is one person’s “virtual event”, might be someone else’s webinar. Companies marketing these services use different terms, often just because they’re eager to drive up their rankings in Google. Or maybe because no one organization oversees the naming of these tools.

What is a Webex?

Whatever the reason, you get some interesting contradictions. For example, web presentations are now known generically as “Webexes”. Webex is the industry leader, to be sure (although the last competitive analysis I saw listed 127 webinar presentation platforms). But using WebEx to describe any web meeting or presentation is like using Kleenex to describe a tissue. While all Kleenexes are tissues, not all tissues are Kleenex. Same with web presentations. I’m sure Cisco’s marketing department doesn’t mind the confusion but there is a difference. Clear yet?

Okay, let’s try to find some common language. Here are some of the most common terms and the differences between them:

• Webinar- the earliest mention of this word is around 1994, and it comes from a combination of web (as in online through the computer) and seminar (it started as a lecture/training format). This means that a webinar is primarily an education tool (although they also serve a useful marketing purpose), and uses 2-way communication. In working with my clients it usually means that it is live, rather than recorded because that interaction is important. This includes functionality such as sharing of computer desktops, applications, PowerPoint, chat and polling to create interactivity and get audience feedback. There are plenty of smaller players like LiveConferencepro, Dimdim and more.
• Webcast- a presentation delivered over the web that is more “broadcast” (one-way to the audience) than interactive. This difference from webinars matters because webcasts can be to larger audiences and can be recorded and replayed. Some tools like Nextwebinars actually encourage you to prerecord your presentations before sending them out into the world. These often contain the same basic functions as webinars but tend to be less interactive so rely less on audience feedback. Companies like Netbriefings and Telenect specialize in this, especially if you want to incorporate video into your presentation. Other lowtech options include Brighttalk and ReadyTalk.
• Webmeetings (or  web meetings, no one can really decide) are simply meetings held on the web using collaborative communication and 2-way audio (and sometimes video). They use webinar type technology but tend to be smaller, interactive and rely on two-way communication to be truly effective for brainstorming,sharing critical team information and training. These also include collaboration tools that capture notes, share documents and allow input from multiple people at the same time.  You can certainly use the big players, WebEx, GoToMeeting, LiveMeeting, or you can use collaboration tools like Via3,
• Videoconferencing- as the name implies, these tools rely on visual contact between the presenter and the audience. They can range from the high end,high-definition Cisco Telepresence and other tools to low-tech Skype, IMeet and others using simple webcams. These tools are best used for small meetings where looking each other in the eye is important.
• Teleconferences- used to be known as conference calls. They are decidedly low-tech since it’s just a telephone and the information is all audio. Visual references, documents etc need to be handled individually if everyone is to follow along. Sometimes, this is all you need.
• Virtual conferencing: is becoming more and more common. If you haven’t checked it out, you should, although it won’t be right for everyone. This type of presentation, currently used mostly for large events because of its learning curve and up-front investment, combines elements of all of the other tools. Participants are given an avatar and can move throughout the room interacting by chat, voice, view recordings and live presentations. Protosphere, Digitell, On24 and Second Life are examples.

By defining our terms, we can choose the right tool for our teams. Do we need rich, multi-media communication? Does it need to integrate with our other communication tools or can it stand alone? Is it worth the cost and hassle? Are you andyour IT person talking about the same thing?

Making smart decisions about what we use , and how well, is part of our role as leaders in the modern workplace.

What do you use? How is it working for you?