Software Video Conferencing Outsmarts Hardware Based Setups Date:   Monday , April 01, 2013 The demand to stay connected is the most critical in today's era, and more & more businesses are switching to Videoconferencing to get their meetings done. Companies are working towards reducing travel costs & time, plus Higher employee motivation, greater commitment and development of personal ties is what most companies want from their Business meetings and it takes the Human look and feel- the face-to-face interactions to get this done. Enterprises are increasingly using video conferencing for collaborating, training, issue communications & do client meetings, for getting the Face to face meeting experience at low costs. With ever evolving technology, the earlier video conferencing set-ups which required expensive hardware based set-ups, enormous bandwidth & which worked only on similar set ups of its own, limited its usage and is becoming obsolete day by day. Hardware based setups have become a dying technology with the advent of smarter software based video conferencing technology that has removed the barriers of cost and complexity and encouraged the current generation of workers to adopt video conferencing, enabling users to connect cross-platform wise on all major Operating Systems and all browsers. Expensive hardware endpoints are giving way to more affordable, high quality software video conferencing solutions. Further highly advanced software based technologies like PeopleLink are able to converge TelePresence quality into desktop video conferencing to give the users the best live face to face meeting experience, at affordable price point and very low bandwidth of even 124kbps. High Quality video conferencing is expanding beyond the boundaries of Boardrooms and conference room systems into users’ hands. High quality cameras at low costs, easy bandwidth availability, Powerful PC processors, smart phones, tablets suggest it is a matter of time before anyone to anywhere video meetings will be as common as making a telephone call today. In the past three years alone several companies have moved from hardware-based conference room solutions (which are also quite expensive) to software based video conferencing and conducting business meetings via laptops and smart phones. Anybody can get connected from anywhere across the world over the internet, without having to worry whether they are travelling, in the office or at home & what mobile device they are on. Today, What an IT Decision maker is keeping in mind while selecting the right Video Conferencing Technology for his organization? a. Offer life-like HD performance at competitive Pricing, with the same solution being able to offer interoperatability of TelePresence as well as Desktop Based Video Conferencing, so that while the Business Heads are connected from a multiscreen TelePresence setup from their Boardroom, another remote executive should be able to login to same meeting from his Laptop or even smart phone even while travelling. b. Secure, Robust & Compatibility with old and existing hardware VC setups as well as SIP based UC environments to present a seamless experience where any user can login from anywhere over the internet. c. Variety of inbuilt collaboration tools like WhiteBoard, sharing excel, PPTs, docs, video file sharing and co-browsing for enabling detailed content sharing & recording for later use. d. Flexible, Secure & Robust client server architecture with server level back up and unlimited free client logins to connect any number of locations & not few fixed locations only. This enables all employees in the organization to be VC ready at any time, and get connected for better interaction and higher productivity monitoring. The future of video conferencing is very promising and affordable for deployment at large scale. With more & more companies looking at the benefits of deploying video conferencing as a tool for secure business communications, & staying connected with clients, as well as remote work from home employees. Any organization can effectively cut down its travel costs by 30-40 percent by using advanced Video Conferencing Technologies. Further by combining the interaction of cross platform videoconferencing along with the interactive collaboration tools, as offered by highly advanced technologies like PeopleLink, an effective environment to connect multiple sites & work on global projects together is created at low costs. Video Conferencing is emerging as a preferred means of communication to enhance marketing, training, and business communications with internal and external audiences.