At the recent Cisco Partner Summit, Cisco Chairman and CEO said the future was all about video in his keynote address. He references the recent Cisco acquisition of Pure Digital Technologies, the maker of the flip video camera, as a big win for them in the video arena.
He went on to predict that within the next few years, 90% of all network traffic will be around video. I think this is a stretch, a big one. Maybe for giants like Cisco this seems realistic, but for the rest of us, it’s going to take longer. Many firms are worried about the economy, and trying to simply keep the doors open for business. Sure, video conferencing and the like can cut down on travel related expenses and increase efficiency (no lost productivity during travel), but the price tag for truly effective video solutions is a huge barrier to overcome.
True telepresence video conferencing systems, which is what I think needs to be deployed to truly replace an in-person meeting, run from around $50 thousand to the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This seems a luxury not many companies can afford in this economy.
I do believe we’ll see a dramatic increase in the more consumer-based video products, like the flip video camera, video calling over IP, and web collaboration that incorporates video. But I think the true coming of video as a standard business communication tool won’t happen until we see a dramatic drop in price for telepresence solutions.
Erika Moskal
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