What is video conferencing? Webopedia explains that the term means: “to conduct a conference between two or more participants at different sites by using computer networks to transmit audio and video data.” Each participant relies on a device with a camera, a microphone and speakers.
As video conferencing has become an increasingly practical option for many companies, it has unleashed an array of exciting implications for the business world, as this article will further explain…
The future is now very much here
If you have been part of the workforce for a while, you might recall a time when holding video conferences wasn’t financially feasible for most organisations. Indeed, this impracticality of video conferencing persisted until the mid-1990s, but the situation is very different today.
While video conferencing is comparable to video calling, the latter is usually limited to one-to-one communication. With the former, you can see live footage of each of the conference’s participants on your screen, even when those people are disparately located, as you host proceedings.
Furthermore, that screen doesn’t necessarily have to be on a desktop or laptop computer. Participants can use smartphones and tablets for video conferencing, too. Still, by providing your staff with the right technology and infrastructure, you can help them to enhance the experience.
How technology has opened doors for video conferencing
Whereas a video conferencing system once seemed too expensive and complex to implement in many cases, the emergence of Voice over IP – VoIP – technology has changed this. As this technology enables video and voice data to be transmitted online, it has essentially made voice and video calling free. That’s no small advantage in the highly cost-conscious world of enterprise.
Nonetheless, keep in mind that video conferencing draws on bandwidth much more heavily than a rudimentary video call, Lifewire cautions. If you would like your video conferencing to use decent quality video, each participant would probably need 1 Mbps of bandwidth per session.
Why make video conferencing integral to your workplace?
Whereas travelling to meet people for a face-to-face conference is very costly and time-consuming, video conferencing would let you schedule and carry out a meeting – all within an hour. Plus, it wouldn’t even have to matter if many of the participants were in completely different parts of the world.
Those people may not necessarily have been drawn away from the office due to business trips, either. You might have personnel who often work from home or in offices at a significant geographical distance from your head office.
When you hold video conferences regularly with these people, they can feel more like part of your company’s community. Nonetheless, as you need the right infrastructure underlying your video conferencing system, don’t underestimate how much a hosted phone system could allow you to streamline communication. Gamma offers such a system in its Horizon product.
Various businesses can contact the UK-based telecoms firm Gamma by phoning 0333 014 0000 – and, in this way, take a big step towards more thoroughly tapping into the potential of video conferencing.
