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The Exchange Review is a product of the collaboration between Brockmann & Company and the Human Productivity Lab. It is the industry's first in-depth review of inter-company telepresence and video conferencing exchanges. A company-wide internal-use-only subscription can be purchased for $1,750.

Executive Summary of the Exchange Review

In our recently published work, The Inter-Company Telepresence and Video Conferencing Handbook we defined the most significant factor to improving the utility of telepresence and video conferencing as the ability to easily conduct inter-company sessions with customers, partners and suppliers as a substitute for physical travel and as a substantial upgrade to the typical audio conference.

The main problem of connecting to partners, vendors, and customers is that they are typically on different networks with different QoS schemes, private addresses, and have different security policies.  Additionally, issues of how does one schedule inter-company telepresence calls with another organi-zation, handle inter-operability with disparate systems, and whose MCU/Bridge will host the call must all be addressed.

Using a model, not unlike the architecture of the Public Switched Telephone Network, telepresence and video conferencing exchange providers are making the physical connections required to connect one or-ganization to another. Although most services are currently manually initiated, just as telephone calls were in the first half of the last century, they will become increasingly automated in setup, in reservation and in operation.

In The Inter-Company Telepresence and Video Conferencing Handbook we were first to discuss the drivers, challenges and technologies enabling inter-company visual collaboration and exchanges. Our goal was to provide a guide for forward looking organizations that saw the benefits of inter-connection but needed to better understand the business, operational, and cultural issues that needed to be addressed to create an effective program.

In the Exchange Review, we provide the first overview of the technology providers who are developing solutions to enable the physical connections and provide the operational tools that enable ease-of-use in-cluding: directories, dialing plans, and end-to-end monitoring tools that pin-point problems across multi-ple networks.  We identify the service features to look for and provide the first feature comparison matrix highlighting how nine leading service providers are delivering exchange services today. These two reports provide a complementary view to the need for and operation of exchanges.