By 2016 video conferencing will be the world’s preferred business communications tool – and will move far beyond the boardroom, said Nicolette Kruger, country manager at NFS Technology, a specialist software company that supplies software for the hospitality industry, including for the conference and video conferencing markets.
Citing a recent Polycom global survey, Kruger says video conferencing would overtake e-mail and voice calls as the preferred communications tool.
“From a convergence point of view we will also see a continued growth of mobility and mobile workforce strategies, BYOD (bring your own device) policies and cloud-based technologies. On top of this, research has shown that the number of smartphones and tablets will double during 2014. Mobility is the name of the game “
In fact, tablet sales are expected to overtake laptop and desktop shipments by 2015, growing to just under 3-billion by 2017. With video technology software available on tablets and mobile devices, face-to-face video collaboration is moving far beyond the office – and will continue to change the way we conduct business.
Some of the areas where mobile technology is being used are in healthcare, where healthcare providers are harnessing video technology to deliver medical services to patients in some of the most remote areas in New Zealand.
A law faculty in Hong Kong uses it to collaborate with overseas students, and to simulate court proceedings in real-time. Research teams at a pharmaceutical manufacturer in India, meanwhile, are speeding up development and approvals through increased collaboration between laboratories.
We will also witness the uptake of video conferencing by individuals, as well as business functions and departments not normally associated with this technology. The use of video in the enterprise, however, is still – in some quarters – seen as a technology to be used in boardrooms.
“But this viewpoint will soon change. Video conferencing will be seen as a technology that goes way beyond its role as a management communications tool, becoming, instead, a resource to be used throughout the organisation – and on several platforms – resulting in an increase in productivity and efficiency,” said Kruger.