Prospects of Video Conferencing in India - Business - Workplace Communication
Video conferencing solutions have emerged as one of the most important collaborative communication tools for corporate firms, as these allow several professionals to coordinate simultaneously in real-time. Professionals can liaise with each other using such business conferencing solutions effortlessly. Indian firms are expected to lead the growth of conferencing solutions in Asia, with as many as 70 per cent professionals from this country deeming such solutions to be more pervasive than ever. In a research, it was found that 57 per cent corporate professionals currently use video conference in India; however, by the end of 2011 this number should grow substantially. This will be a huge change from the current scenario, in which 82 per cent professionals rely on face to face meetings and 60 per cent use emails as a means of corporate communication.*
India is a nascent market for video conference solutions, whereas it has already breached the corporate sector in Europe. However, the rate of acceptance is reportedly more in India than in Europe, as the 98 per cent of professionals prefer maintaining visual contact while carrying out important business deals. Therefore, personnel of Indian companies can easily communicate using business conferencing and avoid employees' travel and accommodation expenses, thus saving substantial amount of money.
Presently, India is evolving as a market for web conferencing software and vendors must find out the specific demands of their prospective clients. They need to gain useful insight into the requirements of consumers, that is large enterprises as well as Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). By zeroing in upon the requirements of their target audiences, vendors can easily develop solutions that can provide a smooth collaborative conferencing experience. Therefore, service providers will be able to capture the market easily and deliver the most suitable standard with customised solutions.
According to the research, companies based in telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, financial services and government sectors will pave the way for the growth of web conferencing software. Apart from these, firms based in media and entertainment industries will also be crucial in the growth of video conferencing in India. These firms will be able to deliver the solutions according to the requirements of the clients, for example desktop software, specialised consoles and applications for handheld devices. This will provide companies with various choices to enjoy collaborative communication with business conferencing solutions that serve their requirements satisfactorily.
Service providers should focus upon creating specialised applications that allows transfer of data between different platforms, viz. desktop solutions, consoles and Smartphones and tablet PCs. Moreover, they also need to make sure that the solutions are compatible with variegated operating systems, namely Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and BB OS 6, among others.
Since the bandwidth of the Internet is used for transferring video and audio in such video conferencing solutions, it is important that vendors develop resource efficient products. Corporate Internet connections provide the bandwidth needed to deliver images, sounds and files seamlessly. With the advent of 3G in India, vendors can also tap into the Smartphone and tablet computer market and create dedicated apps that for handheld devices. This way, companies will provide optimised solutions for video conference in India to users who are constantly on the move, like sales and marketing executives.