The ‘video virtual meeting’ has now come of age as a strategic business tool. Leon Perlman reports
Cut-rate airfares, Voyager Miles and bargain hotel and car hire deals are set to face stiff competition from an unlikely source — the telephone line. With near-video quality images, video-conferencing over normal copper telephone lines using new high speed digital transmission links has led to a steady decline in business travel both in South Africa and abroad.
Recognising the time and cost benefits, a number of prominent South African companies have embraced the virtual meeting.
Video-conferencing is being touted as the technology that will restore the lost elements of interpersonal communication over long distances. Users are able to engage in face-to-face conversation, more personalised than the disembodied voice on the other end of the line. You simply push a few buttons, and you’re looking at your client or global partners, doing the meeting
Other applications of video-conferencing are legion: ad agencies can use video to send proposed ads to clients who can then make changes in real- time. Dangerous or security criminals can be tried from their cells, while doctors can send X-rays to remote experts. The University of South Africa (UNISA) is, at present, using a video-conferencing system for distance learning and BMW are set to install a similar system.
A typical room-size video-conferencing set-up from companies such as V-Tel and Picture Tel involves a digital telephone line and a large-screen video- conferencing hardware system with remote capabilities.
Desktop personal computer (PC) versions from Creative Labs, Siemens and Intel are also available for around R8 000 a station. In the room-size versions, a wide-angle lens camera allows users to walk about and talk freely, while dialogue is picked up by a multi-directional microphone. Documents can be viewed using a separate overhead
You can even link up a PC to provide document conferencing, sharing of text and graphics files and real-time collaboration using shared white- boards — almost as easy as handing them across the conference table.
The video-conferencing market is poised to grow by leaps and bounds as the industry proves that virtual meetings are viable alternatives to business travel, supplying video and audio quality that comes close to duplicating being there. A typical (quality) room-size conference setup can cost anywhere from R50 000 a station, while the cost of a one hour Johannesburg-Cape Town video- conference using a high speed dial-up International Standard Digital Network (ISDN) line is around R100 an hour. Telkom’s Diginet leased- line service is a better alternative if more than two hours a day usage is anticipated.
Compare that to R1 500 a person for return business class air tickets, as well as hotel and car hire costs. Of course you can fit as many people in the conference on either end as you like. Getting to a video conference, by contrast usually takes only a few minutes, and participants can get back to work or home as quickly.
But video meetings are no longer just a way to save travel budgets. They’re more productive, since deviations from the agenda are punctured by technology: if you barge in when someone else is talking, all eyes are on you, and you better have something useful to say. These were some of the reasons why Guardian National linked their offices in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg.
The Department of Public Works installed a system because of an anticipated shortage of office space in Cape Town during the parliamentary session. Their link up, from Parliament to Pretoria, has proved successful and other departments are said to be eyeing the system with interest.
As the cost of the hardware is reduced, the growth of video-conferencing systems will ultimately mirror the explosive growth pattern of today’s omnipresent fax machine and global systems mobile (GSM) cellphones. Some observers predict that business cards will list video-conferencing numbers alongside those of voice and fax.