World Videoconferencing Infrastructure Systems Market

The Global Videoconferencing Market Continues to Grow with its Ability to Cut Travel and Facilities Costs in the Economic Downturn

In 2009, the world videoconferencing market continues to grow, albeit at a slower pace. The economic slump while putting downward pressure on IT spending could be a market driver, as videoconferencing helps companies reduce their travel and facilities costs, while supporting a virtual workplace. Multiple market forces are making the market ripe for change, says the analyst of this research. The inflection point for large-scale videoconferencing technology adoption has arrived. The key business drivers for videoconferencing endpoints adoption are increasing globalization and the business need to reduce costs while enhancing productivity, remarks the analyst. Organizations of all sizes are supporting a globally dispersed and increasingly mobile workforce - ideal candidates for videoconferencing. Moreover, environmental, social, and government policies are driving end users as well as information technology (IT) companies to sharpen their focus on adopting green products. The emergence of web 2.0 in the enterprise and increased usage of video in the consumer space, prevalent among gen Y-ers', will affect video adoption in the enterprise. Businesses will prefer technologies that accommodate the new generation workforce and videoconferencing fits that paradigm. Besides, awareness about unified communications (UC) is growing at a significant pace. As the enterprise communication industry converges around UC, it will boost the adoption of videoconferencing, which is becoming an integral part of all UC products.

Potential Cost-savings and Established Return-on-Investment Helps Conferencing Technologies Cope with the Economic Slump

Overall IT spending and deployment of enterprise communications technologies face considerable challenges from the current credit crisis and recession fears that continue in 2009. The economic downturn has serious implications on the forecast and vibrancy of several enterprise communications markets, making IT budgets inevitably tighter. This could conceivably lead to a comparatively slower momentum in the videoconferencing markets compared to the last two years. Nevertheless, conferencing technologies, overall, will cope better with the downturn due to their potential cost-savings and an established return-on-investment (ROI). The impact of the economic slowdown on conferencing markets will be bi-directional, where, on one hand, companies with a severe credit crisis and survivability issues may have to cut costs in a multi-faceted manner, including by capital expenditure (CAPEX)-oriented investments such as videoconferencing, explains the analyst. On the other hand, companies with less severe capital constraints and that can survive the meltdown will cut costs as well as seek additional opportunities to improve business performance. They will reduce operational costs and increase revenues in the short-term through technology implementation such as videoconferencing. The enterprise communications industry is converging around UC. Videoconferencing, which is becoming an integral part of all UC products, will grow significantly by increasing usage at the desktop as well as by generating demand for room systems and telepresence, as an extension to the desktop. There will be three avenues for future growth:

• Infrastructure systems will follow to support a fast growing installed base of high definition (HD) endpoints
• End-to- end infrastructure solutions such as bridges, gateways, management, and scheduling tools, and firewall traversal will grow to support converged Internet protocol (IP) deployments, and
• UC deployments will require supporting videoconferencing infrastructure systems, which will fuel long-term growth.

Videoconferencing vendors should focus on partnering with UC vendors, concludes the analyst. They should position themselves as video enablers' with product and partnership strategies, as a part of a complete communications solution.

Technologies

The following technologies are covered in this research:

• Videoconferencing bridges/multipoint control units (MCUs)
• Gateways
• Gatekeepers
• Management and scheduling software