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PRZOOM - /newswire/ -
Huntington Beach, CA, United States, 2011/04/13 - BrightCom CEO discusses how the technology of pioneering consumer video products in the 1990s is perpetuated in today's telepresence and video conferencing industry and why vendors should begin to move forward.
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A recent report by Infonetics Research found that annual enterprise video conferencing and telepresence system revenue grew 18% in 2010 to $2.2 billion. Based on this, the research firm projects the market to more than double by 2015, hitting $5 billion. But as the enterprise adoption of video communication increases, BrightCom CEO Bob McCandless questions the industry's technological advancement in a recent discussion of the history of video conferencing.
“Apple CU-Seeme, AT&T's videophone and the CAL-Tech CERN project were among the first real video conferencing systems that introduced people to live video communication,” states Mr. McCandless. “As an emerging technology, they set the standards for the majority of what the industry uses today.”
However, Mr. McCandless perceives that today's video conferencing and telepresence industry has not moved far beyond the original technology of the original video technologies in the early 1990s.
“One of the dangers of perpetuating technology, is that we do not move forward. We continue to use standards like H.323 or MCU based systems long after the industry probably should have moved on to something else.”
Using an analogy to the automotive industry, Mr. McCandless believes that one of the reasons the industry is not changing is because of the familiarity - and hence comfort with these older types of systems.
“Imagine the consequences if we were still on the path of only using the same gasoline engines that were first made for automobiles. We are just now barely moving beyond that with hybrid and electric cars, but this innovation will help us move forward. I think this is a good analogy to the video conferencing industry. I think we are still doing things the way we did it before because we are accustomed to it.”
Mr. McCandless feels that one of the forward-thinking options for video communication today is software based technology, due to its flexibility.
“If you look at the way BrightCom does multi-way conferencing, there is something more advanced in video with a software foundation. I think of software as something that can be easily updated, modified and is flexible enough to be adapted to business needs over time.”
But without a widespread interest in multi-way video conferencing on massive consumer-based scale, Mr. McCandless believes the industry as a whole will continue to reuse the same strategies for its technology.
“Imagine if the several billions of dollars that went into acquisitions over the last year, instead went to funding R&D and the advancement of technology. We would have a very different industry than we do today,” states Mr. McCandless.
Mr. McCandless is featured in a continuing video series entitled, Telepresence and Video Conferencing: Past, Present and Future. Stay tuned for the next series of interviews discussing the present state of the telepresence and video conferencing industry.
About BrightCom
BrightCom video and telepresence conferencing solutions aid businesses in gaining more value with real-time collaboration and natural communication. With unique integrated data and video conferencing solutions, BrightCom (brightcom.com) offers a wide range of options with Lumina Telepresence and ClearView Video Conferencing to connect people and content from home offices, mobile devices, desktops or conference rooms. To learn more about BrightCom’s unique telepresence and video conferencing with in-depth collaboration features but without a costly investment on bandwidth upgrades, call or visit the website.
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victoria_sauer[.]brightcom.com 
