For more discussions and topics around Service Providers, please visit our SP Community: http://cisco.com/go/serviceprovidercommunity To read the full blog post (with working hyperlinks): https://communities.cisco.com/community/solutions/sp/blog/2014/03/24/we-re-gonna-need-a-bigger-boat

1. We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat….
Posted by David Danto
As I write this blog I’ve just returned from this year’s Enterprise Connect conference in
Orlando. In 10 more days I head to Las Vegas to attend Interop and present the panel
discussion on emerging video technology. Attending and preparing for these events has
given me a unique perspective on the collaboration industry, which I think needs to be
shared with all service providers. In the words of the immortal Chief Brody (Roy
Scheider) in the movie Jaws, “we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
(Image source)
The industry was already buzzing with a relatively large number of new, lower cost
devices even before the conference started. Over the last seven years the cost of
high-end systems used for collaboration (Telepresence) was sometimes prohibitive.
What we’ve seen in just the last year is that, like the proverbial pendulum, what had
swung too far to one side often swings back too far in the other direction. We’ve seen
the entrance of a number of collaborative hardware product offerings in the $1K US
range. These systems - by such manufacturers as Tely Labs, Logitech and Google -
offer varying performance at a low price - more expensive than a desktop software
video system but less expensive than a traditional appliance. These systems are
targeting the enterprise conference rooms that had displays but no videoconferencing –
meaning far more rooms can be equipped at a much lower price. While this increased
penetration of video is good, there are a number of general caveats to using such
systems:
 The fixed-image webcams that some of these systems use are good at capturing
images of people sitting directly in front of their displays. However, they are generally
completely inappropriate for capturing the images of three or more people sitting in a
room. Don’t let the marketing pictures or stories from even the most reputable firm
deceive you into believing you’ll see anything but a wide shot of tiny people in a room
with an installed fixed-image webcam.

2.  Low-end appliances will generally produce better images than software alone, but are
almost universally not monitor-able. If you want to know the status of the video systems
on your network - in case someone has kicked-out a plug or experienced some other
failure - than these are not for you. If you’re deploying a collaboration device in a critical
area, or for a VIP, you should spend a little more money at the front end, instead of
spending a lot more time on the back end, explaining how you couldn’t determine that
the system had failed even before the VIP tried unsuccessfully to use it.
 The interoperability strategy of a low-end system is not always clear. In some cases,
they only work with other units from the same manufacturer. In other cases, the
manufacturer provides an “off-ramp” for interoperability, but using it may result in poor
user experiences, additional use charges, or both. Don’t assume that a system that
meets an organization’s needs today, will be able to grow with that organization in the
most cost effective manner.
At Enterprise connect this year, the world of low-end, software based systems was
stood on its ear by Cisco. In his keynote address to the conference (which you can
watch here) Cisco’s Rowan Trollope introduced their new SX10 Videoconference
Codec. It is built to fit on or under a display, connect with two cables (HDMI and RJ45
with POE) and be ready to go in two minutes. It has an HD Pan/Tilt/Zoom camera, a
remote control (and a smartphone app for those that hate the remote) and sports a
$1.5K US price. Oh, and by the way, it’s a full video appliance –hardware! For the
same price as pc based systems that can’t be monitored and can’t support dedicated
QoS, organizations can now own an industry standard videoconferencing appliance that
can be monitored on a network.

3. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or shark catching police captain to realize that
organizations are going to start buying these systems to use in locations where
traditional videoconferencing systems were just too expensive. That will mean the need
for more bandwidth, more support – more everything. We’re gonna need a bigger
boat…
For more discussions and topics around Service Providers, please visit our SP Community:
http://cisco.com/go/serviceprovidercommunity