Today the small medium sized businesses still look at video conferencing as a divergent item, a very new technology that they haven’t needed before. If you go back in time to the 1980’s, fax machines were a divergent item. Very few companies had them, but they soon became ubiquitous as their impact on how we communicate with paper became obvious — Purchase orders, delivery information, time critical letters all sent via fax instantly. Email is another example of a divergent item in the enterprise. Again in the early 80’s companies had very sophisticated email systems that worked only internal within their network. Can you imagine doing email only internal to your organization today? These became powerful ways to communicate more efficiently. In the late 80’s if you did not have a fax number on your business card, you weren’t with it. Email addresses also started to appear on our business cards almost overnight.
The advantages of video conferencing are becoming more obvious as the technology comes into its own. Video conferencing has been around for many years, however in its early development, systems were expensive, difficult to use and the network standards were not established. Systems were proprietary and only worked within a particular manufacturer’s product line. The result was very little or no return on investment. In the late 90’s this all changed first with ITU, International Telecommunications Union standards, established. Video conferencing manufactures where able to produce lower cost, standards based products for the conference room. The advantages of video conferencing started to become more obvious with a variety of applications like video arraignment for court rooms and jails; Job interviews for Recruitment professionals; Healthcare consultations with doctors of various hospitals, etc.
Now the advantages of video conferencing are growing because it’s much easier to purchase the technology. Cost has decreased substantially while the video conferencing technology becomes more refined. Computer collaboration is simple on a videoconference. Secondary inputs like document cameras, DVD’s and other input devices are easy to connect to a system. The advantages of video conferencing are growing fast. Soon we will all have a public video number on our business cards, just like the fax number and email address.
J.W. Hornyak Videoconferencing & Telecommunications
Instant Access
