"Video conferencing is inevitable, but so is the day when the sun flames out and consumes the earth.

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"Video conferencing is inevitable, but so is the
day when the sun flames out and consumes the
earth. Which will come first?", Stan Gibson, 1999
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Audio/Video/Data ConferencingBret
MatthewsData Connection
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Audio/Video/Data Conferencing

• Data Connection Background
• What Is It?
• Historical Development
• Who Uses It And Why?
• Predicting The Future

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Data Connection Background

• Software Development
• Communications protocols Higher-level services
  (Middleware)
• Packaged Solutions
• Supplier to Major Industry Players, Service
  Providers and End Users
• History / Numbers
• Founded in 1981
• Straight line growth
• 240 people
• 21.5M Revenues 7.3M Profit
• Products
• MetaSwitch
• H.323, SIP, T.120, SNA, ATM, SS7, MPLS,
• Messaging and Directory
• Voice Access to Email, WWW, Content
• Conferencing
• DC-MeetingServer
• Microsoft NetMeeting, DC-Share for Unix
• ITU-T Standards Participation e.g. T.128

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Conferencing What Is It?

• Video/Audio Conferencing
• Video and Audio talking heads
• Telephone call on speed
• Collaboration
• Data
• Share Applications
• Whiteboard
• File Transfer
• Chat
• On-line interactive meetings
• Multipoint over local and wide area
• Potential Markets
• Home/Consumer
• Vertical (e.g. Banking Kiosks)
• Corporate
• But depends on
• Bandwidth
• e.g. audio requires 5-64 kbits/sec, video
  requires 150 - 500 kbits/sec
• Latency

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Traditional Videoconferencing
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Desktop Conferencing
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A Conferencing-Enabled Network
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Historical Development

• First Sightings
• Jetsons, 1962
• ATT PicturePhone debuted Worlds Fair 1964,
  available 1970, 160/month
• Compression Labs, 1982, 250,000 system, 1000
  per hour to use
• Group (Room) Systems (early-90s onward)
• Small Market
• Tens of thousands of pounds per unit
• Single purpose hardware and software
• PictureTel, VTEL, BT, TANDBERG
• Desktop (Personal) Systems (mid-90s onward)
• Huge potential market
• Runs on standard hardware costing 1000 or less
• Proprietary islands of interoperability
• Data Connection, Polycom, Microsoft
• Key Developments (late-90s)
• Standards T.120, H.323
• Internet / Web conferencing

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Historical Development

• Standards
• H.32x
• H.320 ISDN 64kbps x n
• H.324 PSTN lt28.8kbps
• H.323 non-QoS LANS Internet?
• T.120
• T.122-T.125 MCS/GCC multipoint infrastructure
• T.126 whiteboard
• T.127 multipoint file transfer
• T.128 application sharing
• T.134/140 chat
• H.323/T.120 clients
• Microsoft NetMeeting for Windows
  http//www.microsoft.com/windows/netmeeting/
• Netopia for Mac http//www.netopia.com/software/
  tb2/index.html
• Data Connection for UNIX
• Sun Forum http//www.sun.com/desktop/products/so
  ftware/sunforum/
• SGImeeting http//www.sgi.com/software/sgimeetin
  g/
• HP Visualize Conference http//www.hp.com/visual
  ize/fyi/bissue/july99/newprods.htm
• IBM AIX

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Conferencing Who Uses It?
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Conferencing Who Uses It?

• Hewlett Packard
• Conferencing servers in the US, Japan, Australia,
  Europe, and Singapore.
• Over 100,000 on-line meetings and 12 million
  minutes of conferencing per month
• Increases teamwork among dispersed employees
• Saves time and money - between 275,000 and
  400,000 per month
• Budget Rent A Car
• Virtual classroom between three training labs in
  Illinois and 127 remote workstation sites across
  the U.S.
• Usage has grown steadily, reaching approximately
  400,000 minutes in Jan 2001
• Training costs have dropped from 2,000 per
  trainee to 156
• More employees are being trained, from 60 to 99
  
• Employee performance as good or better than with
  traditional training
• Return on investment (ROI) achieved in 6 months
• Merrill Lynch
• Servers located in the US, UK, Australia, Japan,
  and Singapore
• Enterprise-wide deployment, with over half a
  million minutes per month of usage
• Saves over 1 million per year

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Conferencing Market Status

• How big?
• The conferencing services market is projected to
  approach 14 billion worldwide by 2005,
  representing a 38 compound annual growth rate
  over the 2000-2005 time period. (IDC July 2001)
• Home Market
• Low Bandwidth (traditionally)
• Chat Audio?
• Mix of GrannyPhone IRC/Chat Adult
• Audio/Video is poor to appalling over Internet
• Vertical
• Very limited deployment
• Value-add over proprietary approaches
• Helpdesks, call centres

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Conferencing Market Status (2)

• Corporate
• High bandwidth on corporate LANs
• Variable bandwidth in Intranets
• Strong bias to data
• Not enough bandwidth for Audio and particularly
  - Video?
• Can always use the phone!
• Security / firewalls
• Corporate Sell?
• Quantifiable benefits reduced travel costs
• Non-quantifiable benefits
• Improved work practices/productivity
• Better job satisfaction and employee morale
• We use it between sites
• High levels of interest/deployment across
  sectors
• Engineering Ford, Boeing, BMW,
• Military
• Service Providers

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Conferencing Predicting The Future

• Web clients
• Rapidly growing sector
• Lack of standards and bridging to traditional
  clients like NetMeeting
• Conference Servers
• in-house or via ISP
• security, management
• bridging communications IP and PSTN
• services web proxy, recording
• Development of infrastructure
• More bandwidth e.g. deployment of 100Mbit
  Ethernet
• QoS in VPNs
• predictable bandwidth
• predictable latency
• Email was the major corporate growth technology
  of the 90s ...
• Conferencing is a major corporate growth
  technology in the new millennium