The market is moving from vanilla video conferencing services to high end video collaboration solutions such as Telepresence since it creates a live, face-to-face meeting experience.

The total market size for video conferencing in India is estimated at Rs. 190 crore for FY 09-10, registering a growth of 25 percent over the previous year. Endpoints constitute 80 percent of the market with the remaining 20 percent contributed by infrastructure.

Polycom emerged as the clear leader with more than 50 percent market share. The second slot was occupied by Tandberg that was placed in the tier two. Cisco, Aethra, Lifesize, and Radvision occupied the third tier. Sony, Actis, Intellisys, Altera, Microsoft, among others made up the last tier. (This classification is based on ADI Media research.)

Cisco Systems has agreed to buy Norway-based Tandberg ASA for about USD 3 billion (Rs. 14,400 crore), expanding its push into collaboration technologies that help people work together from different locations. Acquiring Tandberg will not only help Cisco expand its offerings for telepresence but for collaboration technologies generally. Together, they are the second largest player capable of giving significant competition to the leading player, Polycom.

Among the resellers, the major players are Avaya Global Connect, Siemens, Wipro, Business Octane (earlier known as Total Presentation Devices), HCL Infosystems, Godrej, and Plus Business Machines.

Major Trends

There is strong evidence that stand-alone videoconferencing solutions will be impacted by the changing usage dynamics and the availability of superior technology in the market. As convergence brings voice, data, and video onto the same network, new technologies are rewriting the rules of collaboration. The future is the sum of several independent innovations coming together. One network brings all types of information (voice/data/video) into the home, office, and industry. Today, networks are becoming increasingly scalable and enterprises are realizing the benefits of having all the applications on the network. The introduction of high definition technology is one of the trends witnessing fast response in the market.

HD video conferencing is an evolution of video conferencing technology - which provides a better (and clearer) communication experience. Video is smoother, resolution is higher, screen viewing area is larger and audio performance is clearer - which transforms the quality of interaction in meetings and collaboration between people in different locations. Most importantly the bandwidth requirements of this technology are reasonably modest - you can achieve high definition with a bandwidth as low as 768 kbps. While some of the important verticals, like healthcare, use it based on their needs, many are adopting it for overall clarity.

The H.239 standard is now universally adopted by all major video conferencing manufacturers for data sharing, making it simple for users to see the presenter (people) and the presentation (data) simultaneously. Now, a collaboration session via an H.239 videoconference, wherein distributed teams share PC-based documents while also enjoying audio-visual communications, has the effect of a virtual conference room or classroom.

The most visible trend in SMEs was the increased usage of desktop conferencing. Although it has not displayed a healthy growth yet, many organizations seem keen to adopt it, and it can very well drive video conferencing in the future.

Telepresence

The market is moving from vanilla video conferencing services to high end video collaboration solutions such as telepresence since it creates a live, face-to-face meeting experience. Among enterprise, there is continued adoption of telepresence solutions to facilitate communication between their knowledge workers and increase collaboration with their customers across the globe. However, telepresence is an expensive technology and as yet has seen adoption only by large enterprise. These are offices in multiple locations, nationwide, or around the globe, and who find it easier to justify the RoI of the Telepresence solutions.

Taken in its broadest sense, Telepresence is the next generation of Videoconferencing technology. It is capable of creating the impression of life-like interactions in real time. The participants may be in different corners of the world but the effect is that of a meeting taking place in one room. The difference between the vanilla video conferencing services and telepresence is in terms of the actual experience. Telepresence requires a complete high-definition architecture that combines HD voice, video, and content sharing capabilities with other elements of HD infrastructure. Attention is paid to the room setup, including the acoustics and the lighting. The jitter (variation in delay) is brought down to zero.

Traditional video conferencing was done in a conference room equipped with a television-set type unit, where employees had to use remote control keypads to set up meetings. Even the desktop applications had its own limitations in offering quality of interaction. However, while the difference in experience between a telepresence solution and traditional video conferencing can be dramatically different, the underlying technologies and concepts are the same - so that users are able to easily connect, regardless of the device they are using.

With this in mind, solution providers such as Tata Communications and Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Limited have begun to offer TP services on a pay-per-use basis. With the arrival of public Telepresence rooms by Indian Hotels, Marriott International & Starwood Hotels, customers now have the flexibility to pay on an hourly basis for these services.

Future Outlook

In India, the adoption of HD videoconferencing is across the board. Traditionally education and health verticals are ones that have the potential to be large drivers of adoption of VC. But quality is a requirement that every business has. With HD video conferencing technology becoming increasingly affordable, its adoption across industry verticals is visible. Currently, though the primary sector continued to grow at a steady rate, there was sudden spurt seen in the adoption of video conferencing especially in the government sector.

With the availability of broadband on the increase, and the growing awareness about the benefits of video conferencing technology the video conferencing market is estimated to grow to a greater extent in the year ahead. However, certain challenges need to be overcome to facilitate this growth. Bandwidth issues lead to critical performance gaps. Wireline networks, a key requirement for higher bandwidth, are not available in remote areas. This deprives them of the opportunity of using video conferencing for education and business, among other things. Customers also look for open standards and equipment compatibility for seamless integration. Lack of ease-of-use and high maintenance of the equipment is also an area of concern. Need for customized and scalable solutions are also being expressed unanimously along with the need to justify RoI. Customers look for the right mix of normal VC, telepresence, and web conferencing solutions to meet their communication needs and this demand is one potential driver for further growth.