Is Video Conferencing Over-hyped?

One of the ancillary technology that continues to grab headlines and investment from major industry players is video conferencing.

The technology that allows users to “see and interact” with one another has gained favor with small and large enterprises alike during the last few years as a:

More impactful alternative to typical voice conferencing
Way to conduct distance learning sessions and trainings
Vehicle to lower travel costs

But is video conferencing equipment living up to the promises pumped out by vendor’s marketing budgets? Better yet, has video conferencing, which has been around since the 1970’s ever been more than hype?

According to A. Michael Noll, in his piece “Is a video teleconferencing bubble emerging?“, the answer is no and yes.

Citing research conducted during the 70’s and 80’s Noll found that:

Teleconferencing was best suited to regularly occurring meetings intended mostly for information exchange and similar low-risk purposes
Public room teleconferencing was not successful and that the facilities had to be on one’s own premises
For users, high-quality audio was far more important than video (can you say HD Voice?)

In total the sum of research and Noll’s ascertains point to the fact that video conferencing has and continues to be a highly touted technology that has not lived up to its promise.

Now, I’m no video conferencing expert.

My video conferencing usage has been relegated to Skype, Vidtel’s video phone calling service and some extended demo’s using Polycom’s video conferencing suite. All of which have proven to be positive experiences.

Yet none of these experiences have driven a full blown need for video conferencing. Which would lead me to believe that the research cited above is accurate.

So for those of you more familiar with video conferencing, “Is video conferencing over-hyped?” Or is video conferencing continuing to grow in favor with small and large enterprises alike?

Garrett Smith

Garrett is the former VoIP Supply CMO.

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View Comments

Tsahi Levent-Levi says:

September 9, 2009 at 1:28 AM

Garrett,
I would ask where do you see the hype?
Video conferencing is steadily (and somewhat slowly) growing year over year in enterprises. Add on top of that the people using Skype video and you've got a service that is being used.
I haven't seen it covered as much as other services (anyone say twitter?), so I can't see a hype around the service. It is true that video conferencing companies are pushing their service, touting it as the best thing since sliced bread, but that's what companies do - glorify their services. I wouldn't consider it as hype though.
Tsahi
JohnP says:

September 9, 2009 at 4:26 PM

My customers *think* they want video conferencing. Then I show them GotoMeeting or WebEx or OpenMeetings or DimDim with a conference bridge. Then I explain that large companies use these tools internally for projects and have for almost a decade. Seeing the other person really isn't that important, but seeing the same file or application is critical to team work. For example, having a project manager go over a schedule with different team members leads to dependency resolution. It also removes the requirement that everyone on the team have a license for an expensive software tool when they will never use it (MS-Project or MS-Visio).

Video conferencing has a place, but until you get into the $20K/location solutions, my opinion is that you are really getting what you want.
Garrett Smith says:

September 10, 2009 at 10:05 AM

@Tsahi:

Well I guess I could say listen to a Cisco or Polycom quarterly earnings call. Or perhaps all of the marketing push that is currently behind the technology from the "big players."

But my post was really commentary on Mr. Noll's piece. And a solicitation for feedback on it from those more well versed than I :) (thanks!)
Garrett Smith says:

September 10, 2009 at 10:11 AM

@JohnP:

Your statement seems to concur with what Mr. Noll wrote.

It seems seeing is not as important as hearing and "understanding" the context of a conversation (which visual aides assist more with than say facial expressions).

Thanks for the input.
Einar Flydal says:

July 14, 2010 at 7:48 AM

The basic findings in the 1990-ies, when a.o. I was myself into video conferencing field trials, was the following:
The more uncertainty about the people, the topics, the discussion, the outcome, etc, the more human bandwith is needed.
So, when people are known to each other, outcomes are evident beforehand, procedures are distinct and shared, etc, a phone-meeting will do fine. At the other extreeme, when CEOs what to chat about the world situation, they need to meet in persona, or virtually by using multiscreen "video walls". In the middle between, there is Skype and poorer systems that might well do the job.
However, there are a lot of technical hazzle (color temperature of light, background colors, conference bridges, ventilation fans, location of camera to get eye contact, etc etc) that might ruin the video conference. Hence, stable conditions and trained support is mandatory to make the use systems - large or small - attractive enough for a second try.