Set the Stage for Video Conferencing ROI

By Kathryn Lynch, Senior Product Manager, Virtela Communications

Adoption of video conferencing has been growing slowly but steadily in recent years, and the recession is accelerating that growth as businesses look for new ways to cut costs. Decreasing travel expenses and increasing productivity through better collaboration with video conferencing can provide significant return on investment (ROI), but companies should thoroughly assess their needs and network preparedness before investing to ensure that they reap maximum benefits.

In the current economy, decreasing travel expenses is the primary reason for deploying video conferencing. While travel prices have increased, the price of quality, high-definition video-conferencing equipment has decreased, making deployment more attractive and resulting in a shorter payback period. Exact ROI for a video conferencing implementation depends on a number of company-specific variables, including number of traveling employees, travel locations, duration of travel and the type of system deployed (e.g. HD, webcam, telepresence). While the numbers may differ, any well-planned type of deployment promises the potential for significant savings on travel. In addition, soft benefits such as improved job satisfaction, greater productivity, and increased shareholder value through green initiatives should not be overlooked.

Only Fools Rush In. The ROI and business benefits from video conferencing are myriad. However, in order to ensure that video conferencing delivers the desired results, companies must pay careful attention to the network infrastructures supporting their deployments. This consideration is critical, but often overlooked. With video, dropped packets cannot be re-sent and can significantly hinder communication if the packet loss is severe enough. Poor WAN connectivity can put at risk the time and money spent on a video conferencing initiative. To ensure maximum benefits – financial and otherwise – from video conferencing deployments, IT managers should follow these four best practices:

• Ensure a scalable, high-bandwidth network: Many network providers do not have the global reach necessary to support connectivity at multiple locations. Adding new sites, partners or acquired companies on disparate networks also presents a challenge. Be sure that the network can scale both globally and with bandwidth to meet evolving company needs.
• Consider convergence: Converging data and video traffic is cost efficient (cost/Mbps typically decreases as bandwidth increases) and provides additional bandwidth for other applications when the video system is not in use.
• Prioritize with MPLS with Class of Service: An MPLS network is a good option to support convergence because it provides multiple classes of service, meaning video traffic can be prioritized over other applications.
• Have a backup: Ensure that your network has failover capabilities in the event of a network disruption. Managed service providers that integrate multiple networks can ensure reliability by interconnecting with more that one backbone transport infrastructure in a region so that traffic can be rerouted to the best network path between two sites.
• Use a secure extranet for cross-network communication: Third-party secure extranet services can solve the challenge of video connections between business partners with different providers. In this case, a neutral private network bypasses the degradation-and congestion-prone public Internet.

Keeping Score. Video traffic involves huge amounts of data transfer, which means even small performance disruptions can jeopardize communication. To ensure optimum network performance and a successful deployment overall, companies should monitor the following three metrics:

• Packet loss: An acceptable range for packet loss during a conference is 0.1 percent to 2 percent with telepresence normally requiring a number under 0.1 percent in order for participants to remain unaffected. The effect of packet loss on the video application is “blockiness” and/or jerkiness of the video, as well as audio drop-outs.
• Latency: Prioritization is critical so that transit times are the same for larger video packets (800-1,500 bytes) and smaller audio packets (less than 480 bytes); this maintains lip synchronization. The level of latency that is tolerable depends on the level of interactivity (e.g. one-way training session vs. brainstorming meeting), but a typical rule of thumb for latency is that at 300ms, users in an interactive call will begin to notice a delay.
• Jitter: Jitter refers to unwanted variation when packets are received. Data can be buffered in response to a traffic delay, but if the delay continues to change, processors get overloaded, driving up latency and packet loss. This results in frozen and jerky video. Jitter should be below 20ms to ensure high-quality video conferencing.

The ROI for video conferencing is especially attractive given today’s economy, but for precisely the same reason, businesses deploying the technology cannot afford to overlook the foundation for success: the network. To reap the productivity, environmental, and bottom-line benefits of video conferencing, companies should make sure they have a high-performance network, such as a global integrated network from a managed service provider, and closely monitor performance by measuring indications of delay and disruption.

Kathryn Lynch is senior product manager responsible for overall development and delivery of video communications and convergence services at Virtela Communications. Prior to Virtela, Lynch held product management and marketing positions at Nortel, AT&T and Qwest, and has worked extensively in the telecommunications, Internet, video conferencing, and cable TV industries.

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