Business Communication - A Case Study in the Next Generation Solutions

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Next Generation Answers to your

Communication Challenges

A Solution Brief about Click to Meet™_Express:

By Gary Dietz, Senior Product Manager, First Virtual Communications

The core of all business activities—whether “selling”, “training”, “educating”, or any of two dozen other business verbs—has always been a constant. The unchanging business reality is that the most successful organizations are the ones that communicate most effectively within and outside the organization.

Today’s business dynamics demand nothing fundamentally different from what has been required for the past few hundred years. Yet globalization, competition, an increased emphasis on lifelong learning, and the availability of a less expensive and more powerful communications infrastructure has created an awareness that new tools can and must be applied to traditional communication modalities to remain competitive.

What have changed dramatically are competitive forces that demand increased speed, accuracy, and flexibility from communication modalities. If you can’t get your ideas worked out, distributed, and acted upon quickly then someone else will do it first. Combine that worry with these issues:

• Unprecedented access to raw information

• An international market of people on whom you must rely to filter and form that raw data into something useful

• A tangible reluctance to travel (be that for financial, safety, or personal reasons) and today’s business dynamic is a challenging place in which to communicate effectively. This solution brief discusses how this challenging environment demands a new way for teams to accomplish the “verbs” of business communication. It examines previous attempts to address these challenges and why they came up short. Then the characteristics necessary for a communications solution to meet these next generation challenges are presented.

Click to Meet Express, a next generation solution designed from the ground up, was designed to meet these challenges. This brief closes by showing how Click to Meet Express meets them.

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Today’s Communication Problems

Although the “verbs” of business communication have been constant over time, in many ways the methods of getting things done have gotten more complex.

Travel - The additional “Fourth” argument

Saving money by avoiding travel has been a traditional argument for conferencing technology. Even though people are actually taking fewer trips, and significant ROI can be achieved by reducing travel, this argument has yet to be proven a primary driver in adopting conferencing systems.

There are actually three travel issues. The three commonly cited reasons are (1) financial (the CFO says “no” to travel), (2) safety (actual or perceived safety concerns), and (3) personal (people are reluctant to spend vast amounts of time away from home).

A fourth and perhaps more important undercurrent that is pushing conferencing technology is beginning to appear. This argument, the one that will dwarf the “reduce travel” justification as web conferencing becomes more visible is this: The fact that people want to use conferencing technology in business circumstances where travel may never have even been considered. As a Frost & Sullivan report recently said:

“Since the market began, one of the primary benefits associated with the adoption of a web conferencing service or premises based solution offering have been its ability to minimize the time and resources associated with unnecessary corporate travel. However, in the last two years, the market has emerged from merely a substitute to travel to a powerful communications tool utilized in

situations where travel may have never been an option.”1

When companies cut back on travel budgets they need alternatives to face to face meetings. Progressive companies are looking for cost effective and unique ways to maintain and enhance their overall communications needs.

Having reduced resources doesn’t mean reduced expectations

Productivity, ROI, and getting more done with less is today’s reality. Companies are seeking creative ways to save time, save money, get people to work together, and ensure that projects are created, planned, and executed on time and under budget. Schedules are compressed and expectations are high. Successful organizations need an edge – and to leverage everything they can.

Economics require expanded access to lifelong learning

Companies of all sizes are realizing the economic benefits of post-secondary education and ongoing skills training. The wide breadth of online content available today is made even more usable when at least some of it is presented in an online format with a live instructor.

In a conversation with Janna Gilbert, director of the Potter’s School, we discovered an interesting trend in online learning and “course completion” rates. When online materials were not

accompanied by a live online instructor the “drop-out” rate was high--about 6 to 7 out of 10 people wouldn’t complete what they started. But when an interactive component with a real, live instructor

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was added to the online course mix at least part of the time, the numbers reversed--about 6 to 7 out of 10 completed the course.2

Managing desktop communications… from your desktop!

E-mail and IM are double-edged swords, yet forward thinking managers have learned to help their people tame this lion. The uptake of e-mail and instant messaging as business tools has shown that having access at the desktop to everything in your business world is essential. And knowing how to manage that sometimes burdensome influx of information is a skill that can be learned.

For forward thinking companies whose employees that know how to manage their desktop

information well, taking common presentation and collaboration tasks “away” from the desk doesn’t always make sense. This observation doesn’t mean that actual face-to-face hallway, conference room, and travel based meeting are not necessary! They are necessary.

More people will learn to master their desktop PC’s as an integral part of work processes just as they have the phone. With that learning, more real-time presentation and collaboration tasks will move to the PC.

Increasing the human touch: reducing barriers between people

The best communication technologies have always sought to increase the communicator’s “touch” and reduce the effects of distance between people. For example, the fax machine, overnight deliveries, and the Internet’s World Wide Web have increased a communicator’s ability to quickly “touch” people with ideas. Speedy travel and the telephone have also reduced the distance between people.

There is no doubt that computers and the Internet are often viewed as cold technology. But just as adults have started to see their children learn to use instant messaging as a warm, real, connection between people worldwide, people at large are starting to see that these new conferencing tools can add warmth and the human touch to real-time business activities. Herein lays the justification for deploying web conferencing.

Companies that understand this need for the human touch will add rich media conferencing tools to their business processes. These companies will thrive.

The Next Generation Solution

How can you meet these complex challenges in your business? This section lays out the tenets behind solutions that can effectively meet today’s challenges. It also outlines one way to look at timeline of attempts to deliver Web conferencing solutions across IP networks.

Meeting today’s communication challenges

To meet contemporary challenges, communication solutions should meet the following criteria:

• Understand the communication goal: Correctly match the communication goal (the

“verb” trying to be accomplished) with the proper high-tech or low-tech tool.

• Enhance, not replace: Acknowledge that “traditional” communications methodologies

(from the pencil to the telephone to the postal service) are useful and familiar, and that

2_{Personal conversation between author and Janna Gilbert, Director, Potter’s School,}

http://www.pottersschool.com, about knowledge she has acquired while lecturing and consulting on distance learning around the world.

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people are reluctant to change. So, as much as possible, new solutions must enhance the way people already do things, not replace them

• Anchor points to the past: When technology can be an effective replacement of an old communication modality, ensure that the tools provide an effective anchor point to the familiar past so that the communicators can quickly understand and incorporate these new facilities as painlessly as possible

Communication transition to IP networks and the Internet

The past few years have seen the start of a transition by businesses to use the Internet to accomplish some business communication goals. The following sections outline this move to better accomplish communication goals across these newer networks.

The First Generation

The first generation consisted of: • The telephone

• E-mail

• Early point-to-point room videoconferencing • Rudimentary desktop point to point video

The Second Generation

The second generation upped the ante:

• Often presentation focused – took the most common of business communication verbs (“present”) and addressed it.

• Integrated standard telephones into a web based presentation environment

• Many solutions deployed as a per-minute or per-month service that were akin to services they also received from the phone company

The Next Generation

• The next generation is the result of the convergence of three factors: Increased PC power, higher capacity/lower cost networks and an acknowledgement that standards and

interoperability are a key component of a complete solution. Characteristics of the next generation include:

• Choice of one or all of a full range of multipoint audio, video, and data with full moderator choice.

• Conference with anyone - Acknowledge and embrace previous technologies (like standard phones, legacy videoconferencing systems, e-mail, office applications) within the context of a web conference.

• Allow deployment as an Enterprise solution or as an offering through a Service provider • Demonstrate a compelling ROI in any deployment scenario

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The Click to Meet Advantage

Click to Meet was designed and built to meet the demands of organizations that need next generation applications. The balance of this brief will examine why the Click to Meet approach provides

significant benefits over traditional VC products and the 1st_{and 2}nd_generations.

Click to Meet Express compared to videoconferencing-only solutions

Traditional videoconferencing, especially dedicated “room-based” hardware, has had limited adoption when compared to the total number of people who need a face to face solution to work more effectively. (One analyst estimates that there are only 400,000 hardware videoconferencing “endpoints” in active use today3_{.) The low adoption rate of this modality of communication, despite} a decade of availability, illustrates it has some challenges even when you ignore cost.

Important Note: First Virtual Communications believes that these legacy approaches to videoconferencing systems have their place in certain segments of business communication. Our product line, including Click to Meet Express, supports these systems! The points in this section are present to illustrate that there are very common needs that are not appropriately addressed by dedicated hardware-based videoconferencing systems.

Why does the “room based” model have limited appeal?

When you have a roomful of people, the primary reason cited for videoconferencing – seeing the reactions and emotions of the people – often disappears. Why? When more than two or three people in a typical conference room are at a single site, their “headshots” become so small, it is hard to discern individual reactions. This problem is compounded by the ways in which traditional videoconferencing systems show multiple sites in their “continuous presence” layouts—the effective space that an individual’s expression takes up on a screen becomes very tiny indeed when, for example, you are using a nine-way continuous presence option connecting multiple conference rooms. And if you are using pan, tilt, and zoom or even voice activated camera control, a very interactive meeting can seem like a cameraman’s dizzy nightmare.

Ironically, traditionally room vendor criticism of software-based desktop solutions has been that the video is “too small to be useful.” In fact, First Virtual believes the Click to Meet Express approach to intelligent continuous presence involves a user interface that provides flexibility allowing visual communication that actually exceeds that which is provided by traditional room-based video solutions. The Click to Meet Express approach acknowledges the fact that legacy videoconferencing systems have their place in some situations and exist in the real world. And Click to Meet is the only web conferencing solution that, in a highly integrated way, supports the ability to invite legacy video systems into next generation Web conferences.

Forget travel! What about your team members on another floor?

With the traditional meeting room model that room conferencing systems support, people have to go to a conference room. Traditional videoconferencing systems seek to “connect” those rooms. But not all meetings are appropriate to this conference room modality – yet that’s “where the video system is” so the meeting is adjusted to fit the technology. Sort of a backwards way of approaching a solution, isn't it?

Traditional room based video system deployment assumes a lot, much of which is not always true. Here are some very common things that room based video systems don’t address:

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• What happens when you decide that you need someone’s participation at the last minute, or even after the meeting starts, and that person can’t come to a “connected” conference room or has no access to a “videoconferencing system?”

• More casual, ad-hoc, small group, let’s meet “now!” collaborations between people aren’t always able to be choreographed in the traditional meeting room paradigm.

• The physical location of the presentation materials is often not in where it is easily accessible to participants in a conference room. Today’s business networks often have people most comfortable and able to access their personal data while sitting at their desks with their computers.

• Collaboration and creativity occurs at the desk as often (or more often) than in the conference room – both locales benefit from having other remote people involved. But legacy videoconferencing rarely relates to typical desktop tasks.

So why don’t we just “move video to the desktop?”

Click to Meet’s next generation approach is not just about moving video to the desktop – it’s about the communications “verbs” that are enabled at the desktop. Video may not even be involved at all in some cases.

While some data presentation capabilities exist in traditional videoconferencing systems, they fall short in a few ways:

• They are often one way only, allowing some kinds of presentation but not collaboration • The resolution of the display devices doesn’t match the normal content creation patterns of

most presentations without specially repurposing them (i.e. most people’s PowerPoint slides are not optimized for TV viewing).

In fact, most traditional videoconferencing solutions, be they for a room or desktop delivery, have mostly been concerned with essentially adding video to a phone call. A value, yes, but alone not a compelling reason for wide deployment.

Inviting anyone, anywhere

Though room based systems occasionally have the ability to bridge in a phone call, inherently they don’t have the ability to “invite anyone.” The Click to Meet approach allows attendees to invite room based systems, telephones, desktop PCs running the software based Click to Meet Conference client, IP phones, SIP devices like phones and Windows Messenger, and software based H.323 video and audio clients.

Click to Meet Express provides this ability on the fly-a PC user doesn’t have to have the Click to Meet Conference Client before they are invited – they can install it the first time they are invited.

Click to Meet Express Compared to 1st and 2nd Generation Web

Conferencing

The first and second generations of web conferencing paved the way for the next generation. As we enter the next generation, Click to Meet has learned from and is moving beyond the past two generations.

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Service based models

Many second generation solutions are service based, or “pay by the drink.” While this is an excellent, low-cost way to try these new communication tools, once the adoption curve grows across an organization, the costs can become prohibitive.

The customer premises installation model that Click to Meet can support can create dramatic cost savings when compared to a service. See the First Virtual Communications Return on Investment calculator at http://www.fvc.com to run your own numbers.

Voice solutions are “out of band”

Many second generation solutions leverage a standard telephone, but do it “out of band.” In other words they require a separately provided phone bridge at the time of the conference. And the phone call portion of the web conference is paid for separately.

Click to Meet Express supports:

• Customer owned telephone to Voice over IP bridging (with 3rd party gateways) integrated into the conference – this allows some to connect via phone and others via web browser. • Full, integrated, multipoint VoIP in the conference

For those who desire it, 3rd party telephone bridging services can still be used, just as with previous generation solutions.

Standards-based interoperability

The previous generations failed to provide interoperability with other company’s systems. Click to Meet supports its own web based plug-in called the Click to Meet Conference Client, and can also involve 3rd party standards-based conferencing tools like SIP phones, H.323 systems, Windows Messenger, and standard telephones directly in the web conference.

Cost basis

Total cost of ownership for some of the previous generations is high. Consider these two examples: • Room based video systems can cost $3000 to $20,000 per room. And that doesn’t include

the multipoint bridge as an owned piece of equipment or rented as a service. And at the end of the day, these investments are targeted at a single room.

• Per minute or per month Web conferencing services are a great introduction when they are used sparsely. But the per minute or per month charges can run into the hundreds of dollars per hour and tens of thousands of dollars per month as the usage uptake increases. And these charges never end.

In contrast, the Click to Meet Express approach allows:

• Customer owned and deployed system that runs on standard server hardware and operating systems, leveraging your IT strengths.

• A true viral deployment with web based clients that are not charged for on a per-registered user basis. Touch as many people as you want to, and just increase the number of

concurrent ports licensed through a software key when you need to support more simultaneous connections.

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Deployment options and benefits

One of the major benefits in both cost and deployment of Click to Meet Express is in Intelligent Linking™. Intelligent Linking allows multiple servers to be deployed across multiple nodes of a company’s distributed network. Connections are managed in such a way that bandwidth usage can be dramatically reduced over WAN connections between offices saving considerable network costs. Click to Meet’s intelligent linking provides dramatic performance, usage, and deployment flexibility when compared to the way that traditional videoconferencing are deployed in a limited “cascade” of MCU’s. See the First Virtual Communications web site at http://www.fvc.com for white papers on Intelligent Linking.

What Click to Meet Express does

Who should use Click to Meet Express?

Click to Meet Express can be used by a wide variety of people in a wide variety of professions. • Weekly sales meetings

• Ad-hoc design reviews

• High-school or college level distance learning • Customer sales presentations and demos • Strategic coordination

• Extend executive “room based” video systems to a wide range of employee desktops

What do (and don’t) I need to use Click to Meet Express?

Please see the First Virtual web site at http://www.fvc.com or your authorized reseller for complete, up to date details and product information bulletins on system requirements, including:

• Compatible Server Operating Systems • PC requirements

• Compatible systems

• Recommended Cameras and Microphones • Pricing and Support packages

• Special offers that may be in progress

Click to Meet Express 2.0: An overview of features and benefits

This overview concludes with a brief PowerPoint presentation of a complete survey of Click to Meet Express features and facilities. Please contact First Virtual or your authorized reseller for more details.

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