Coming To A Screen Near You

The days of relentless traveling for meetings in different cities are on the way out. A combination of economic hard times, environmental awareness, improvements in internet infrastructure and the growth of cloud services means videoconferencing is becoming the leading cure for jet lag.

So much so that despite downturns in many business areas, enterprise videoconferencing is a strong growth sector, according to IDC, the technology information consultancy.

In its report, EMEA Videoconferencing Equipment Forecast 2011-2016, IDC notes that videoconferencing revenues in Europe, the Middle East and Africa grew 20.5 per cent last year to $809.5m.

But videoconferencing is not just a matter of installing Skype and getting on with it: deciding to implement videoconferencing in a business of any size is a challenge not only for information technology (IT) departments but also for chief financial officers (CFOs).

The latter have to make decisions about the cost benefits of high-definition telepresence versus lower-end equipment, and about whether to fund the capital cost of setting up in-house infrastructure or going with a cloud provider. They also have to consider the cost implications for existing IT infrastructure.

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