Stephen Epstein, Chief Marketing Officer, of unified visual communications industry innovation company Avistar Communications Corporation, was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about his company's groundbreaking study of visual communications trends the rapidly growing field of desktop videoconferencing.
Stephen Epstein describes the reasons for companies using videoconferencing and shared some of the advantages and disadvantages of the system. He also gazed into the crystal ball and shared some of his thoughts on the future of videoconferencing and of communications in general.
Thanks to Stephen Epstein for his time, and for his informative and comprehensive answers.
Thanks as well to Norman Birnbach of Birbach Communications, Inc., and his team, for their assistance in facilitating this interview.
What was the background to this groundbreaking study of visual communications trends?
Stephen Epstein: Each year, as part of our marketing efforts, we look at market conditions to help us focus our efforts. For the last two years, in the spirit of the social media age we live in, in which it is important to share perspective and insight, we've issued some of our insight regarding the more mainstream part of the visual communications market.
Briefly, how does videoconferencing fit in as a unified communications tool?
Stephen Epstein: Technology has given us a number of different ways to communicate – email, instant messaging (IM), and audio or phone and video. Many of those communication methods have been available as standalone services. Leading Unified Communications (UC) systems like Microsoft OCS and Lync and IBM Lotus Sametime integrate different communications services into one solution so that you can IM with someone you're talking to via videoconferencing without having to open a new window. The next step, we believe, is to integrate communications into key points of the business process, known as communications-embedded business processes or CEBP.
Is videoconferencing growing in prominence to the point of being everywhere?
Stephen Epstein: Absolutely. Videoconferencing has captured people's imaginations since AT&T unveiled the videophone at the 1964 World's Fair, and again a few years later on "Star Trek." But the technology wasn't there. It is now, and thanks to free consumer video chat services like Skype and FaceTime, videoconferencing is available everywhere.
Is interoperability becoming an issue for creating bridge standards to use different systems together?
Stephen Epstein: We see interoperability – the ability for technology to work across different systems, platforms, etc. – as being a big issue. The reason is partly due to the technology: closed systems have fewer issues and work better, and partly due to a business decision that bets that companies can sell more when customers are locked into one platform and can't buy a low-cost generic alternative. So current UC systems have been built as proprietary systems to limit connections to other systems. The problem is that people need to connect to people at other companies, who may be using a different platform.
To put this in context, imagine you're a Verizon customer and that the only way you can connect to an AT&T customer is to buy a separate phone and service plan and now you need to call a Comcast customer. The industry had addressed this before, and will again need to tackle the interoperability issue. The alternative – focusing customers to develop ways to bridge standards, media processing and signaling at their own cost – is unacceptable.
Is there a trend toward companies having to bridge standards at their own cost, or is that potential for added cost disappearing as a barrier to using visual solutions?
Stephen Epstein: Companies need to communicate. They need their employees to collaborate, even if they're in different locations, and that is more often the case these days. They need to develop relationships with customers and manage vender relationships. Right now, companies have to either figure out an acceptable compromise or determine a way to bridge the standards themselves. Ultimately, the UC developers will need to find a solution to the interoperability issue. However, because the Avistar C3™ solutions are interoperable, we're not finding that a barrier for customer adoption. Companies want videoconferencing solutions that can work across different systems.
Stephen Epstein (photo left)
Many business people think of videoconferencing from their own offices. Do you see an increase of mobile videoconferencing from anywhere?
Stephen Epstein: Absolutely, videoconferencing has moved from the conference room to the desktop, and from the desktop to the laptop and from the laptop to smartphones and tablets, thanks to the multitude of tablet devices hitting the market and the further roll-out of 4G networks. What we expect to see is the influence of consumer videoconferencing on businesses, as employees who use mobile videoconferencing in their personal lives push for the same capability at work. Videoconferencing has emerged as a must-have solution for business people at offices or on the go, as it provides smart, ubiquitous visual communications – anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
Is there a movement to thinner and less bulky hardware for videoconferencing?
Stephen Epstein: Absolutely. At the consumer level the just-announced iPad2 will be thinner and lighter and contain a front-facing camera for videoconference calls. At the business level, we’re seeing continued adoption of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), which entails delivering a thin client – which may be not much more than a screen and a keyboard with access to all the data and applications hosted on a remote server. This movement will continue to gain momentum as businesses work to control costs while delivering software tools that employees need to do their jobs effectively.
How are the trends in videoconferencing affecting corporate networks?
Stephen Epstein: The big issue is bandwidth management. As demand and usage surge, companies will face pressure to provide increased videoconferencing services. The challenge will be to how to accommodate the demand for videoconferencing while ensuring that critical business applications, that also require bandwidth, are not adversely affected in a battle of the bandwidth. Companies will need to select communications solutions that provide robust bandwidth management, call admission control, user policy support, threshold and utilization modeling, in addition to extensive report and forecasting capabilities.
What was the most surprising result arising from the study?
Stephen Epstein: The impact that consumer technology is playing on enterprise software is really surprising. It used to be that software was developed to serve businesses and then expanded into the consumer market. These days, the look-and-feel of consumer software serves as a template for business software. And, of course, while Avistar has been developing videoconference technology for 16 years, free consumer services have really moved the market forward in a short time.
What is the future of videoconferencing?
Stephen Epstein: Convergence will be seen with videoconferencing popping up as a function in non-traditional devices, such as smart whiteboards and a variety of new and innovative devices, so that people can communicate and collaborate regardless of device, location and/or network capacity. A lot of videoconference solutions are still based on a hardware model of traditional telephony. But the future will require all-software solutions because of their cost-efficiency and high quality. For example, Avistar’s all-software approach lowers procurement and deployment costs by as much as 200%.
What sort of visual solutions will businesses large and small be seeking this year?
Stephen Epstein: Businesses will feel pressure from their employees for the ability to conduct videoconferencing at work. But companies have different requirements from consumers. Smart businesses will evaluate business-class solutions that provide high quality video and audio – because that's what customers expect. They'll need bandwidth management tools and security that aren't available with the free services. And they need the ability to place ad-hoc multiparty calls and the ability to share documents on each employee’s computer screen.
What is next for Stephen Epstein and Avistar in 2011?
Stephen Epstein: There's a tremendous amount of interest in videoconferencing. I think as an industry, we've finally reached the tipping point, and that's very exciting. We're looking forward to working with our customers, technology partners like IBM, Tandberg (now part of Cisco), Polycom, Logitech and LifeSize, and resellers and distributors to continue to push videoconferencing forward. Once people get used to it, they really like videoconferencing, and see for themselves that it's a big improvement over audio phone calls. It's a great time to be in the industry.
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Stephen Epstein, Chief Marketing Officer, joined Avistar Communications Corporation in January 2008 and is responsible for the company’s marketing, product and account management functions. Prior to Avistar he was Vice President, Head of Product Management at Mantas, Inc., where he was responsible for global product strategy, managing product requirements, defining go to market plans and marketing strategy, while continually evaluating the financial services market in order to provide a clear and decisive direction for Mantas’ business.
Prior to joining Mantas, Stephen Epstein was Head of Product & Business Development at Bang Networks where he spearheaded product and business development efforts, focusing on delivering real-time information distribution products. Prior to that he held senior-level management and product development positions including Head of Global Foreign Exchange Sales Technology and Group CTO at Deutsche Bank.
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