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It was a clear demonstration that for organisations which are keen to use videoconferencing, it's important that there are stable, fat communications pipes available. That's one of the reasons for example why the NSW Government signed a $280 million deal with Telstra late last year to roll out broadband to the State's public schools, which will among other things, underpin the use of videoconferencing in the Connected Classrooms.
Nevertheless Cisco and Tandberg were at pains to explain that the use of video is on the march. According to Kevin Bloch, chief technology officer for Cisco ANZ, 65 per cent of the traffic on Cisco's network is now video, and that is growing 400 per cent every six months. Over the coming four years he predicted that the traffic on the internet would quadruple, with 91 per cent of that being video.
Bloch said that one of the factors driving this was the increasing demand for mobility, and the use of smarter mobile devices. Bloch claimed that there were now 4.6 billion mobile phones, and 0.4 billion smart phones. 'There is more traffic now from smartphones than all the other mobiles combined,' he said.
'Sixty six per cent of traffic out of mobile phones will be video in four years,' said Bloch. Clearly the bandwidth promised by the planned NBN will be needed, whatever today's McKinsey & Co report suggests, if Bloch's predictions are accurate.
Cisco paid $US3.4 billion for Tandberg, and completed the deal a fortnight ago, its 137th acquisition. Given that the company believes the collaboration market - of which videoconferencing represents a key element - is worth $US34 billion, its acquisition may prove well timed.
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Phil Siefert, regional director for Tandberg ANZ, said he believed videoconferencing had now reached a 'tipping point' and would quickly become mainstream. He argued that the economics were compelling: 'An executive business system can be paid for with two business trips' being replaced by videoconference, he said.
Not surprisingly he also invoked the usual bogeys used by videoconferencing vendors to encourage companies to embrace videoconferencing and reduce their reliance on international travel. This time the predictable list of SARs, swine flu and the GFC was augmented by Icelandic volcanos, which have interrupted business travel plans in recent weeks.
Siefert also referred to the need for companies to reduce their environmental footprint, which videoconferencing would achieve. He then drew a breathtakingly long bow - suggesting that implementing videoconferencing would help Australian companies meet the requirement to negotiate flexible work arrangements with their employees as part of their obligations under the Fair Work Australia legislation.
For Tandberg partners and customers attending today's conference the bigger issue was not when videoconferencing would become mainstream, but how Cisco's purchase of Tandberg would play out.
Peter Bocquet, director of products and technologies for Tandberg outlined how the companies will work together in the coming months and years. Initially the companies will employ a 'bridging' strategy to ensure that Cisco and Tandberg products are interoperable.
As Bloch quipped: 'It's going to be quite boring.'
Next year the companies will start to embed best of breed technologies from one another in the products of each organisations, with brand new products emerging in the third phase - two to three years hence.
