Brockmann and Company | Customer Insights

REPORT.

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This report is based on the insights of 281 business users from around the world.

Key questions answered in this report 

The core of our research goal was to determine: how valuable is video conferencing? What would users be willing to pay to attend an HD video conference instead of an all-day 50-mile business trip? an overnight 500-mile business trip? a week-long 5,000-mile business trip?

How does video conferencing compare to audio conferences? to web conferences? 

What are the brand implications of one method of collaboration with customers as compared to another?

The state of video communications

HD video conferencing, personal video conferencing and immersive telepresence services have not yet leaped across the so-called ‘Market Chasm’ into mainstream business practice. Only 31% of our respondents participated in one or more HD video conferencing sessions in the past month. Only 11% had participated in at least one session of each of the three emerging services in that same period.

As with emerging products and services most companies struggle with two issues: how to determine the appropriate level of investment and how to justify that investment. This report offers insights into those two issues through comparative valuations.

The report reviews the classic approach comparing the service as a substitute for business travel. By looking at three distinct classes of business travel - day trips, overnight trips and week-long trips - Brockmann & Company developed a Demand curve for each class of substitution. From a review of the value of the service, a user can develop an investment plan.

This report is sponsored by Nortel and LifeSize.

Here's the link to that clever Cisco energy tax calculator from Nortel. I found it by clicking an ad on NetworkWorld.com. This fits real well with the Presidential election year.

Bank Technology News writes about Wachovia's experience with Cisco TelePresence and a plan to rollout the technology directly into the branch for customer interaction. The idea is to bring the experts to the customer or the branch office in a one-to-one life-like visually-rich meeting. In some respects this is similar to the video call center discussed in this Voicecon post.

Although breathtaking in its simplicity, I think several practical issues will stack up to make this execution less than effective:

• Privacy concerns means that the telepresence deployment are only in branches that have offices with doors. 
• The range of experts available will need to be sufficiently large to meet the minimum threshold of productive use of the rooms. 

More likely scenarios are to use the branch device for real-time communications to employees about market changes, business updates and the like. My brother who is an account executive for Wood Gundy in Canada, for example, participates in daily economist calls every morning to help him and his peers at the office, get in the sales and market groove. These are broadcast quality stock broker only private shows.

Keeping the experts in central or regional offices and let the network connect the customer directly is not reminiscent of ESPN's Around the Horn where a range of locations are interacting with the moderator, or more typical one-to-one remote broadcast interviews with Greta Van Susteren on FoxNews, for example. Bring the guest into a suite and let the experts communicate fully and directly from HQ.

Kumar Srikantan, the Senior Director of Catalyst Switching Product Marketing explained that this is a standard practice now at Cisco. Customers go to their local Cisco office and from his San Jose office, he can communicate fully and directly with customers to discuss product plans and implementation specifics as part of the Executive Briefing service.

After Interop, I met on a conference call with David White, the VP of Business Development (he worked at Fore Systems in the late 1990s and was responsible for the Fore-Nortel relationship. My former employer's carrier team were reselling the LAN switch into AT&T) and Amy Peraza, the VP of Marketing at Expand Networks.

Industrial history has always been a pet project of mine, as have the history of innovation and competition in  emerging markets. Enterprise Wi-Fi is one of those.

Microsoft's initial deployment of WLAN services for the Richmond WA and other campuses initially relied on Cisco Access Points which were based on Cisco's 1999 acquisition of Aironet for $800 million. Then, as Microsoft expanded its goals, capacity and coverage Airespace won the competitive bidding cycle at Microsoft so Cisco acquired Airespace. I remember this deal at the time because I was impressed by the logic of Cisco's M&A strategy.

If a critical, leading-edge customer chooses another vendor's technology, buy them and make it your own. Sometimes buying the competitor is cheaper than competing for customers the old-fashioned way.

Now, for some reason, Microsoft then changed their mind and decided to go with Aruba Networks, but Cisco kept to their acquisition. in 2005 Microsoft chose Aruba Networks for their campus deployment and in the past week, Microsoft passed an impressive milestone - 11,000 APs under management worldwide , as part of a global secure WLAN. Congrats Microsoft. Congrats Aruba.

In early 2006, while a member of the Microsoft Mobile Partners Advisory Council, my firm (then it was called FirstHand Technologies) staged a demonstration of our product as part of a big Windows Mobile division afternoon of innovation. We had a pod station, but couldn't show off our dual-mode client application without Internet access. Despite all our best efforts and the engagement with Microsoft IT security - no chance of getting the demo the service we needed. Guest services were not available in that building at that time. Hopefully, this and other experiences have shown Microsoft executives and IT security people the advantages of enabling guest Wi-Fi services.

Microsoft's WLAN environment - CIO.com dated May 2008

Background on Microsoft's WLAN implementation from Microsoft.com (out of date - dated 2004)