Steve Taylor and Larry Hettick at Network World recently talked to the CEO of VBrick systems, which sells video over IP appliances – and suggested that corporate networks should be engineered for video first and data second. More importantly, he suggested that companies will start to engineer for video first and data second this year – 2009.
“Last December (in 2008) I met with 30 CIOs and they were all planning for it to happen this year. CIOs view this as a low-cost way to increase productivity. Obviously there are travel cost savings, but increasingly [IPV] is being used for reassuring concerned employees [with improved communications].” Graziani also noted that the increased bandwidth capacity and improvements in video encoding / decoding technology have also contributed to making 2009 the year for a tipping point.
Don’t get me wrong, improvements in video encoding and decoding technology have made better quality video with smaller file sizes and requiring less bandwidth, and the importance of video in corporate communications is increasing. Combine that with a desire to replace expensive travel with relatively inexpensive teleconferencing during an economic crisis that would make Cthulhu rising from the depths seem like a gleeful distraction, and you can see why the timing’s right.
But considering that data applications for the network include such things as order processing, record retrieval, and report generation – I still have the feeling that companies will continue to see data as a priority for the foreseeable future.
Now, you could argue that when VoIP came around, it was more important that the CEO’s phone rings when he gets a call than processing X orders in Y milliseconds, when Y+100 milliseconds would do just fine. But video over IP is, right now, a nice-to-have.
Now, I’m not saying that Video over IP isn’t important and effective at improving productivity and employee communications. I’m just saying that there are other network aspects that are higher priority. I mean, if you had to pull the plug on one of these services, which one would you choose?
A) VoIP
B) Data Applications
C) Video IP
I’d choose C, any day. Granted, this is a false choice – a properly managed network should be able to handle all three. Again, I’m not taking issue with the use of Video IP, simply the priority assigned to it in Graziani’s remarks.
The difference in priorities may be explained by the idea that there are some businesses out there that are so video-intensive that they might prioritize this differently. However, we can’t imagine this being more than a small percentage.
With that said, the leap from a Data/Voice network to a Data/Voice/Video network is not nearly as challenging as the leap from Data-only to Data/Voice. For one, it’s simply the same problem – a new type of traffic on the network that’s latency sensitive. The main difference from the networking perspective is that VideoIP is more like VoIP’s big brother, with larger bandwidth needs. So I do agree with Graziani that we will see more VideoIP in 2009. The timing’s right, the technology is here. Now we just need to make sure that we have some way to monitor the new communications traffic.
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