MARKET REPORT Conferencing
Conferencing –
what is it about a Huddle?
Applications that enable collaboration within an organisation are seen as constituent parts of the digital
transformation journey. The Huddle Room concept has been one which has driven the conferencing space
over the last few years but is that the only opportunity for partners?
Conferencing has become
far more personal in recent
years with desktop, webbased
applications readily
available and sweeping aside
most of the old compatibility
issues. At the same time video
and audio conferencing has
become a key part in any team
working and collaboration
application. At the heart of this
more up close and personal
nature of this new conferencing
movement is the ‘Huddle Room’.
A huddle room is a small and
private meeting area, typically
seating 3-6 people and equipped
with teleconferencing and
collaboration technologies.
Depending on its size and needs,
an organisation may have several
huddle rooms in addition to a
large, conventional conference
room.
With many of these
conferencing applications being
deployed on-line perhaps it is no
surprise that Amazon, Google,
Microsoft, and to a lesser extent
Apple have all made moves to
take a bigger bite out of the
social and enterprise video
markets.
How is this impacting the
business market?
Clive Petty, Market
Development Manager at
KCOM, says the rise in
enterprise video systems has
had an impact on network
bandwidth requirements and
user experience.
“Microsoft 365 compatible
programmes, such as Teams, are
now becoming an integral part
of how businesses communicate
internally. However, when it
comes to enterprise video, these
technologies typically require
more data, and this can present
challenges for those that do not
have robust networks in place.
Businesses have high
expectations of conferencing
technology and expect that video
conferencing systems should
‘always’ deliver high quality
video and audio simultaneously.
If a video call goes wrong, it’s
easy to notice the disruption
and it can cause a poor user
experience, leaving a negative
impression of the technology
used.
is makes it critical for
technology suppliers to ensure
that their customers have
enough network access and
bandwidth to be able to run
these calls eectively, especially
since the investment in them can
be costly.”
Ian Brindle, Head of UC
Device Sales at Nimans believes
the impact of consumer-based
solutions is having a limited
eect in the business world.
“e market has become very
diverse based on a multitude
of applications and the major
players driving this behaviour
from a business perspective
are Microsoft and Cisco. at
could be audio but because of
the low cost of entry with Teams
or Webex you can have a very
cost eective and high-quality
visual experience with multiple
parties where it would have cost
so much more with a traditional
room system. is will work in
huddle spaces and to a certain
degree larger rooms too. But it’s
not just business but universities
who are adopting their lecture
theatres to take advantage of
cloud-based technologies.”
30 | Comms Business Magazine | March 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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