personal video conferencing -...

W h i t e P a P e r

Personal Video Conferencinghow mobility is changing the video conferencing landscape:industry trends and deployment best practices

July 2012

Personal Video Conferencing

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Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Market Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Personal Video Conferencing Applications & Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Key Requirements for an Enterprise Personal Video Conferencing System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

LifeSize® ClearSea™ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Competitive Scenario: LifeSize ClearSea Advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

table of Contents


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executive SummaryPersonal video conferencing can be defined as the

use of video conferencing software on a personal

computer, tablet or smartphone or, more generally,

without additional, dedicated equipment. it contrasts

with “room video conferencing,” where participants

have to move to a dedicated conference room

equipped for video conferencing.

in the last few years, personal video conferencing

became part of the daily processes and communication

routines within companies and organizations of

every size and in every industry, all over the world,

complementing—and in some cases replacing—

traditional room systems.

Gartner says that more than 130 million workers

worldwide will use corporate-supplied video

conferencing on their desktops or mobile devices by

2015, compared to 7 million in 2008, while spending

on dedicated soft clients will grow at a compound

annual growth rate of 22.9% by 2015.1

this white paper analyzes the latest trends in personal

video conferencing, including the benefits, some case

studies and the best practices for its deployment.

PERSONAL VIDEO CONFERENCING DEFINITION

the use of video conferencing on a personal

computer, tablet or smartphone without the

need for additional, dedicated equipment.

Sales of tablets, as a whole (consumer and enterprise), will grow at a CAGR of 75.6% to reach 294 million units by 2015, with Apple expected to maintain the largest

market share with its iPad line (see “Forecast: Media Tablets by Operating

System, Worldwide, 2010-2015”).

Personal Video Conferencinghow mobility is changing the video conferencing landscape:industry trends and deployment best practices

1 Gartner, Market trends: Videoconferencing, Worldwide, 2011, 28 april 2011


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Market trendsCompanies have been pushed by the need to

reduce costs and increase productivity toward more

affordable video communication solutions such as

personal video conferencing.

the diffusion of personal video conferencing has been

driven by two factors:

1. the transformation of workspaces due to the increase

in numbers of mobile and remote workers combined

with the convenience of having video conference

software directly on your laptop or tablet

2. the outstanding improvements in video and audio

quality that enable an amazing experience

Notwithstanding the remarkable developments of

recent years, the video conferencing market will

continue to change dramatically over the next few years,

with personal video conferencing being the key driver of

a new wave of growth sustained by two major trends:

1. Mobile devices explosion

2. Need for integration

Mobile devices explosion

Mobile video is expected to grow 100% per year until

at least 2015.2 international Data Corporation predicts

that 2012 will be the “year of mobile ascendency”

as mobile devices (smartphones and media tablets)

surpass PCs in both shipments and spending,³ and

Gartner says that tablets as a whole (consumer and

enterprise) will grow at a CaGr of 75.6% to reach 294

million units by 2015.⁴

Need for integration

the addition of new users, new devices and video

infrastructure increases the need for an integrated

environment from immersive telepresence to the

soft client, including all existing room systems.

“interoperability is no longer enough—integration is

a necessity.”⁵

2 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, top 10 Mobile internet trends, Feb 2011

3 iDC, iDC Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020, Dec 2011

4 Gartner, Forecast: Media tablets by Operating System, Worldwide, 2010-2015, 8 april 2011



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Personal Video Conferencing applications & Benefitsthe applications for video communications are

endless, and when video conferencing is properly

deployed, it tends to supplement or replace business

meetings, educational trainings and other forms

of communication. Video conferencing via mobile

and personal devices, instead of holding traditional

meetings and events, takes advantage of the greatest

benefits of all forms of video conferencing: travel cost

savings and increased productivity.

Certain applications, however, are unique to video

conferencing on personal devices due to the

unmatched benefits it provides in terms of mobility,

simplicity, flexibility, scalability and manageability.

Mobility

While traditional video conferencing equipment

cannot be moved from dedicated rooms, tablets

and smartphones perfectly embody the concept of

conducting business anywhere.

Simplicity and flexibility

Placing a video call shouldn’t be any more difficult than

making a phone call. With personal video conferencing,

users can take advantage of the power of video from

any device they’re familiar with, including laptops and

smartphones.

Scalability and manageability

adding new users to a personal video conferencing

system requires only a software client and credentials

to be provided to anyone who needs them; it does not

require new hardware or time-consuming setups.

Moreover, customers are finding new, innovative ways

to use personal video conferencing every day. See the

chart below for a selection of applications.

CHART 1 Personal Video Conferencing Applications

Application Description

Mobile and remote workforce

Nine out of 10 employees don’t work at corporate headquarters, and even the ones who do are often on the road. having the opportunity to join meetings from an airport lounge, a hotel room or even a car decreases idle time and increases productivity during business travel.

Meet on the flyeveryone can easily engage in an ad-hoc meeting with a remote colleague working on the same project and get critical information on the fly without needing to book a room or use dedicated equipment.

recruiting

Video interviews are a great substitute for face-to-face meetings, and they reduce not only travel expenses for suitable candidates but also the time involved in the recruiting process. Candidates are not likely to have personal conference rooms or the willingness to pay for one, but they are likely to have a laptop or a tablet that they can use to join the video conference.

Manufacturingthanks to the extreme versatility of mobile devices, performance inspections can be conducted on a remote production site without flying in an engineer or technician.

elderly careVideo conferencing can be used to provide elderly care services, including video connections to hospitals, emergency centers and relatives. refer to Case Study a.

Distance learning

Not every school can afford dedicated video conferencing equipment. thanks to personal video conferencing, any tablet or desktop with a webcam can turn a classroom into a video conferencing room with guest lecturers from anywhere joining students. refer to Case Study B.


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elderly Care Servicesa Dutch services company needed to extend its offering to a larger number of customers and service providers.

the company offers its services through an interactive portal featuring a range of different services, from video conferencing and video on demand to home automation function, and its biggest challenge was interoperability among different video communication standards.

“even if some enterprises such as hospitals and major care institutions use h.323 systems and are willing to invest in expensive video conferencing infrastructure, the possibility to interact with their customers relies

on the capability to interoperate with SiP-based clients, said the company’s iCt technical consultant.

thanks to the addition of LifeSize ClearSea to its portal, the company has enabled its subscribers to connect with their peers, caregivers and relatives through easy-to-use devices, such as touch-screen tablets on their existing internet connections.

the company is now involved in the development of an elderly-care project that will allow each customer to have a personalized and dedicated range of services, including video connections to hospitals; emergency numbers of relatives; and on-demand video content regarding self-medication, bank/insurance products and home functions.

Distance Learningeducational Service Centers assist schools in providing quality products and services that improve student performance while decreasing costs. this case study focuses on one region’s eSC.

the center adopted video conferencing to deliver distance learning to classrooms beginning in the early 1990s, but it was working with many school districts that had limited broadband internet access and limited funds to acquire video conferencing equipment. as a result, they couldn’t participate fully in many of the academic, remediation and enrichment programs offered through the center’s statewide educational network.

LifeSize ClearSea offered the center a turnkey solution that fits its needs, as it provides a standards-compliant video solution that can utilize schools’ existing networks as well as 3G/4G to allow existing devices to connect with any h.323 or SiP video solution.

With LifeSize ClearSea, rural-area schools can turn their existing PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets (android and iOS) into video endpoints, improving their efficiency with video conferencing and enabling

them to participate in programs they had difficulty connecting to before, all without having to buy dedicated appliances. the coordinator of distance learning programs said that after only a month, at least five new elementary classrooms were able to participate in programs that they had never had access to before, and new requests for access had begun to pour in from all over the region.

employees of the center have also been able to connect to ongoing conferences from the palms of their hands and have even used the video-conferencing solution to stream a regional meeting to a half dozen schools.

Schools in the region also plan to use LifeSize ClearSea to allow some of their engineering students to participate in “ask the expert” events via video conference.

Other applications are being found all the time. administrators who used to view only streamed meetings to avoid having to travel to video meeting rooms now interact in real time using LifeSize ClearSea, improving both participation and productivity.

CASE STUDY A

CASE STUDY B


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Key requirements for an enterprise Personal Video Conferencing Systemthe fact that video conferencing has now become

easier to use shouldn’t prevent companies from

carefully analyzing how the technology best fits into

their existing environments, focusing on what makes it

a high-value choice and a key asset for the company.

this section describes some important elements that

need to be taken into account when planning to

implement a personal video conferencing solution,

as well as suggested architecture.

Simplicity

Simplicity is the key for a successful deployment.

a personal video conferencing solution should be

turnkey and require minimum effort both for the it

department in installing and integrating it into the

existing environment and for the end users in adopting

its use as a daily practice.

Centralized and “IT friendly” provisioning

and management

it administrators should be able to centrally manage

all aspects of the solution, including the integration,

with existing company directories (e.g., LDaP

authentication).

Manage and scale

Depending on the company structure and number of

users, different needs arise in terms of manageability.

Key aspects include centralized management, a suitable

licensing model, tracking and reporting.

Making the most out of existing infrastructure

New-generation solutions should be designed to

integrate with existing infrastructure. Most of the

deployed room systems worldwide are based on the

h.323 protocol, while the newer SiP protocol is gaining

momentum. it is fundamental that a system be able to

interoperate with both protocols seamlessly.

Invisible firewall/NAT traversal solution

the need to connect with mobile workers, customers

and partners who are outside the company network

makes the ability to solve firewall/Nat traversal issues

in the simplest way essential. the solution should

provide seamless connectivity among users inside

and outside of the company LaN. it must be

transparent to end users in order to keep the

dialing complexity hidden.

Address network capacity issues

Gartner says that ”when it comes to personal video,

the it buyer’s No. 1 concern is still the impact this will

have on network capacity.”6 With the increased number

of people taking advantage of the opportunity to use

Full hD video conferencing inside the organization,

bandwidth shaping, supported by the ability to

automatically adapt to changing network conditions,

is a critical feature.

Collaboration and multiconferencing

the ability to share and present documents is

fundamental for collaboration tasks, as is the option

to engage in meetings with multiple participants.

End-user adoption

Some employees might be skeptical about video

conferencing, thinking of it as it was a few years

ago: working only one time out of three, requiring it

support and providing poor audio and video quality.



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Generic architecture for personal video conferencing deployment

INTE

RN

ET

CORPORATE NETW

OR

K

H.323RoomSystem

SIP SoftwareClient

SIP SoftwareClient

SIP-H.323 gatweay

Video IVR

SIP registrar(Provisioning &management)

SBC (Firewall/NAT traversal)

H.323Room

System

LDAP

MCU

IT Administrator

When it comes to personal video, the IT buyer’s primary concern is still the impact this will have on network capacity. The secondary concern is how to make personal video interoperate with group video systems.

What employees want today is to collaborate with

their colleagues whenever and wherever they need to.

Moreover, a growing number of employees expect not

only to be able to use their personal devices for work

but also for their devices to be integrated with the

company network.

these growing expectations, sustained by the

proliferation of smartphones and tablets, are pushing

more and more companies to embrace a “bring your

own device” policy.

therefore, in order to drive employee adoption,

companies should offer an easy-to-use solution that

is also capable of supporting the largest number of

operating systems and devices (PC, Mac on desktop; the

broadest range of iOS and android devices on mobile).

Pervasive software client

regardless of the number of devices on which it

can be installed, the software client should offer a

consistent video communication experience across

all of them.


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INTE

RN

ET

CORPORATE NETW

OR

K

H.323RoomSystem

ClearSeaClient

ClearSea Client

H.323Room

SystemLDAP

IT AdministratorClearSea

Provisioning & management

MCU

SBC (Firewall/NAT traversal)

Video IVR

SIP-H.323 gateway

LifeSize®ClearSea™in this final section, we describe how the proposed

solution can be easily implemented with LifeSize

ClearSea.

LifeSize ClearSea, built by Mirial7 on over ten years of

desktop and mobile video conferencing experience,

embeds in a single appliance all the elements

described above.

Based on a client/server architecture, ClearSea

includes both a state-of-the-art PC, Mac, iOS and

android hD software client and a server component

that provides centralized provisioning and

management, available as a hardware appliance or

as virtual machine software (VMware based).

thanks to LifeSize ClearSea, desktop and mobile

users inside and outside the company LaN can

easily place video calls to one another and to

any standards-based h.323 or SiP room system

or equipment, without any additional gateway

or custom configurations. the same goes for any

standard equipment that is able to connect to any

ClearSea user directly or with the help of the ClearSea

embedded video iVr for improved dialing simplicity.

Besides natively supporting both SiP and h.323

protocols, ClearSea acts as an iP gateway and thus is

able to solve firewall/Nat traversal issues for any device.

ClearSea provides collaboration and multiconferencing

capabilities and is able to rely on the internal

centralized directory or to connect to an external

LDaP directory for integration purposes.

enterprise scalability and licensing per concurrent

ports eliminate costly unused accounts.

Personal video conferencing deployment with LifeSize ClearSea

7 Mirial was acquired by Logitech/LifeSize in July 2011.


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Competitive Scenario: LifeSize Clearsea advantagesWhat makes LifeSize ClearSea different?

Power of choice in mobility

• Broadest range of devices in the industry: more than

40 mobile devices (android and iOS) supported and

increasing rapidly

• Single number reach: users are able to log in to

multiple devices at the same time and answer a

call on the preferred one while consuming only

one account

Turnkey and interoperable enterprise solution

• includes firewall/Nat traversal, multiconference,

encryption, support for h.323 equipment, iM

and presence

• No need for additional hardware

Unmatched quality

• Up to 1080p on the desktop

• Up to 720p on mobile devices

Easy to manage and control

• Works in any existing it environment

• Centralized directory and LDaP integration

provide quick and easy dialing

• Server component available as virtual machine

software or hardware appliance

• No additional cost for unused accounts thanks

to the licensing per concurrent ports

LifeSize ClearSea is the most flexible, open,

interoperable and cost-efficient solution for desktop

and mobile video conferencing.

Timeline of supported mobile devices – LifeSize vs. competitors

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

COMPETITOR 3COMPETITOR 2COMPETITOR 1LIFESIZE

Nov 2011

Oct 2011

Sep 2011

Aug 2011

Jul 2

011

Jun 2011

May 2011

Apr 2011

Mar 2011

Feb 2011

Jan 2011

Dec 2010

Nov 2010

NU

MB

ER O

F D

EVIC

ES

Certified Mobile Devices: 12-month timeline


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GlossaryH.323: an international telecommunications Union (itU) standard that provides specifications for audio/video

communication over packet-based networks.

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol): an application protocol used to access a directory listing. a

directory is a set of objects with attributes organized in a logical and hierarchical manner.

MCU (Multipoint Control Unit): a device used to moderate a video conference of three or more endpoints.

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol): Signaling protocol used for establishing sessions in an iP network.

Video IVR (Interactive Voice Response): an interactive voice response system that includes video.

Virtual Machine: a virtual machine image (software only) that includes the operating system and the application

designed to run on a virtualization platform.

Universal Video Collaborationabout LifeSize, a division of LogitechLifeSize is a pioneer and world leader in high-definition video collaboration. Designed to make video conferencing truly universal, LifeSize solutions are simple to buy, adopt, support and use. Offering video conferencing systems and software applications as well as a full line of video infrastructure, available on premise or in the cloud, LifeSize is committed to universal video collaboration. With LifeSize, customers can participate in large, multiparty hD calls, live streaming and recording, collaboration on any mobile device on any network, all at the highest level of quality. LifeSize was founded in 2003 and acquired by Logitech in 2009.

For more information, visit www.lifesize.com.

WP_PersonalVideoConferencing_0312© 2012 Logitech. all rights reserved. information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. LifeSize is the registered trademark or trademark of Logitech. all other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

AMERICAS:1601 S. MoPac expressway Suite 100austin, texas 78746 USa

Phone +1 512 347 9300toll Free +1 877 543 3749www.lifesize.com

EMEA:LifeSize regional Office 49 89 20 70 76 0 (Germany) toll Free europe 00 8000 999 09 799

APAC:LifeSize regional Office +65 6303 8370 (Singapore)

http://www.lifesize.com

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