Consider the following statistics: Cisco Systems has cut its annual travel budget from $780 million down to $230 million. When the economy improves, Cisco will raise the figure to $350 million — but it will never rise from there, because of increased online collaboration and telepresence. Meanwhile, managed video as a service (MVaaS) continues to proliferate. Are you catching the wave?
Generally speaking, I think most VARs and managed service providers continue to focus too much on basic infrastructure (managed switches, routers and related upgrades) rather than embracing MVaaS. But there are signs across the market that telepresence and high-definition video conferencing is going mainstream. A few prime examples:
- Privately held Lifesize Communications saw its revenue rise roughly 150 percent in 2008 vs. 2007, as VARs and customers increasingly adopted the company’s low-cost video conferencing systems. Our sister site, TheVARguy.com, has been hearing rumors about Cisco potentially acquiring Lifesize.
- BT, the big service provider, is building an Exchange that will allow telepresence sessions between companies.
- AT&T and others are pushing telepresence into hotel conference centers, which are available on a pay-by-hour basis.
- Smaller companies, such as Envysion, are building out MVaaS offerings for channel partners. (The company also publishes a timely MVaaS blog.)
- Cisco’s Chambers expects 90 percent of Internet loads to involve video traffic within a year or two.
With all of those factors in mind, MSPs need to look beyond data and voice. Are you managing video? If not: When will you?
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Joe,
Great post. Video cameras are proliferating businesses and the public sector at an incredible pace. People are coming up with more and more reasons to link video with other data. Then they want to make the video accessible from anywhere on the Internet..and want to easily share it with friends.
Telecom companies–this is the type of converged service that helps you sell a lot of bandwidth. I agree with Joe–what is your MVaaS strategy. See http://www.envysion.com to learn more.
Dan
Dan: The other thing John Chambers mentioned at Cisco Partner Summit was “any device to any format” — meaning that end-user devices and back-end video formats need to be standards based. Interesting point.
I always believed in video, video, video. But my interest grew significantly this week.
The video camera has already had a large impact on the way we do business. The most obvious application, for conferencing, has impacted the travel and hospitality industry, as many SMBs (60-64% pf the biz travel market) have embraced the medium as a time and travel saver.
Also consider the proliferation of video webinars, that allow participants to join from the comfort of their desktops, laptops (many of which come with embedded webcams) and whatever.
We’ve been supporting video apps for some time, and see that as the technology moves forward, video apps become easier to use, and support. MSPs that don’t support video risk losing clients to competitors that do.
Dan: Nice link regarding MVaaS strategy. Tks for sharing!
Jim Van
Logicomm, Inc.
http://www.logicomm-inc.com
Video is “just there” and growing. For video to really penetrate personal communications (teleconference, phone calls, “video mail”, etc) two big things have to happen:
1. video has to be MUCH easier to use than it is now.
2. A generational change has to occur that makes people want to use it. I am a huge video geek and I try to use video every chance I get (mostly using skype). But even my technology saavy friends don’t want to use it. And it’s not because they don’t know how. It’s because they don’t want to.
Darren: I think Flip (and devices like it from Kodak and others) begins to solve that problem. And video blogs are gaining popularity. I think vendors like CSCO will force the issue by putting their own executives, customers and partners in front of video.
But this will certainly be a multi-year journey.
-jp