The Demand For Video Collaboration and Huddle Spaces – Part 2

This is part two of our sit down with Tely’s CEO Todd Abbott to examine how the UC&C landscape and subsequently its demand have increased significantly, especially as the industry moves towards providing the ability for more enriched and impromptu collaboration. You can read part 1 here.

In part 2 of our Q&A with Todd Abbott, we sat down with Tely’s CEO to discuss the challenges facing companies in the UC&C space and the impact that cloud solutions are having on the overall landscape.

Q: Do you agree that the arrival of video conferencing in corporate settings has been more of a pain than a boon for CIOs?
A: I like to call it the “career limiting application,” because as to-date, the Unified Communication and Collaboration (UC&C) industry has done a very poor job in making this technology easy to use and easy to deploy. CIO’s don’t get a congratulatory or thank you call when a video conference goes well, but they certainly get the call when the technology does not work well.

Q: What would you say the #1 challenge is facing UC&C companies today?
A: The number one challenge facing UC&C companies today is getting users – in particular millennials – as comfortable using video conferencing in a meeting room as they are on their own personal devices. Today’s workforce is very comfortable using video on their laptop or mobile devices. Yet, if you bring them into a room for a videoconference, they get very nervous. Whether it is the latest $20,000 technology on the conference wall room or yesterday’s archaic equipment, both prove too intimidating or difficult to use. Most everyone has had a bad experience, which results in anxiety and worse case, employees staying at their desk for a group collaboration and losing the benefit of group collaboration for those in the same office.

Q: What would you say the industry needs to do in order to shift the negative perceptions created by the legacy of video conferencing?
A: The industry needs to make video collaboration in the room as intuitive and as easy as it is from a personal device. We need to deliver technology that is so simple, that people can simply share content, invite remote coworkers and collaborate on the fly without the support of a large IT support staff.

Q: Up until recently, cloud based video conferencing adoption has been lagging behind the UC&C market adoption, but you say that is changing rapidly?
A: A number of companies are now disrupting the legacy video conferencing market. They are delivering much more cost effective video conferencing and collaboration solutions as well as a much improved user experience. Just as the new UCaaS entrants have disrupted the legacy PBX companies, the same is now happening in the VC market.

Q: Where do VCaas companies fit into this disruption?
A: With Videoconferencing as a Service (VCaas) solutions companies are now moving away from the on-premise based legacy solutions. Initially the VCaaS solutions enabled interoperability between legacy premise based VC solutions, but they quickly enabled connectivity from personal devices into the legacy video conference enabled rooms. These VCaaS providers are now enabling the complete functionality of the legacy VC technology but at a much reduced price and with an easy to use interface for the broader workforce.