Is Video Conferencing Technology Moving Forward While It's Growing?

By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Annual enterprise video conferencing and telepresence system revenue growth is clipping along at a healthy rate, according to a recent study from Infonetics (News - Alert) Research.

It grew 18 percent in 2010 to $2.2 billion, and should more than double by 2015, hitting $5 billion.

Growth is great, but BrightCom CEO Bob McCandless wonders how the technology itself is actually progressing, remarking recently that today's video conferencing and telepresence industry “has not moved far beyond the original technology of the original video technologies” in the early 1990s.

“Apple (News - Alert) CU-Seeme, AT&T's videophone and the CAL-Tech CERN project were among the first real video conferencing systems that introduced people to live video communication,” states Mr. McCandless. “As an emerging technology, they set the standards for the majority of what the industry uses today.”

One of the dangers of perpetuating technology, McCandless said, “is that we do not move forward. We continue to use standards like H.323 or MCU based systems long after the industry probably should have moved on to something else. Imagine the consequences if we were still on the path of only using the same gasoline engines that were first made for automobiles.

In his opinion, BrightCom’s multi-way conferencing has “something more advanced in video with a software foundation. I think of software as something that can be easily updated, modified and is flexible enough to be adapted to business needs over time.”

A few days ago TMC’s (News - Alert) Calvin Azuri reported that BrightCom was providing its integrated video and data conferencing for business travelers stranded due to Boeing (News - Alert) 737 Flight cancellations.

The recent emergency landing of a jet belonging to the Southwest Airlines resulted in Boeing, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration, to order inspections of older Boeing 737 airplanes, resulting in cancellation of Boeing 737 flights, leaving the business travelers stranded on ground. More than 500 older Boeing 737 aircraft across the world will be inspected, resulting in the grounding of over 150 airplanes for inspection after every 500 flights. Southwest Airlines canceled more than 600 flights last weekend due to the breaking of a fuselage and the rupturing of aluminum skins in one of the Boeing 737 airplanes.