Let’s take a quick tour of the enterprise video communications options. Don’t be dismayed if you don’t see something that’s just right for an SMB — we don’t either (see chart, Video Communications Vendor Comparison).
Cisco Systems Inc. has created a virtually unparalleled video conferencing experience with its TelePresence series. Almost too life-like, the high-end platforms are decidedly not SMB friendly in their technology requirements, ongoing upkeep or price tag. The lower-end platforms from Cisco are closer to meeting SMB needs, but still overshoot the basic technology and pricing constraints of most SMBs.
Polycom Inc. and HP both have video conferencing solutions that attempt to mimic the Cisco solution while saving an enterprise money. I always would advise shopping around when looking for video conferencing systems. The Polycom immersive and room-based solutions have improved quite a bit and the HP Halo line of solutions also is good. Some of the lower-end Polycom personal video solutions might appeal to SMBs, but they still feel a bit too enterprise remote-office for my taste.
Tandberg, recently acquired by Cisco, has some attractive solutions for enterprises and a few for smaller enterprises. In particular the Profile 42 has some small enterprise uses at a more affordable price. Cisco clearly was interested in Tandberg’s SMB and midmarket room-based and desktop-based solutions.
WebEx, Skype Inc. and Google Inc. all have software-based desktop solutions for video communications. While certainly more affordable than the solutions described above, a smaller enterprise gives up a lot of the benefits of a hardware-based solution, including higher definition graphics, larger screen size and life-like experience. The worst of the four solutions is clearly the Google hosted solution, which is too consumer-oriented for all but the very smallest of SMBs. That being said, Google and LogitTech recently announced an in-home hardware/software-based video solution called the Google TV companion box that allows high-definition (720p) video communications. This type of solution might work in the SMB environment for room-based video communications, but we’ve not seen it in action yet.
