Stan Gibson argues in 1999 that while video conferencing is inevitable, its widespread adoption may occur after the sun burns out and destroys the earth. The document then provides background on audio/video/data conferencing, including its history, typical uses in corporate and business settings, and potential future developments as bandwidth increases.

1. "Video conferencing is inevitable, but so is the day when the sun flames out and consumes the earth. Which will come first?", Stan Gibson, 1999

2. Audio/Video/Data Conferencing Bret Matthews Data Connection

3. Audio/Video/Data Conferencing Data Connection Background What Is It? Historical Development Who Uses It – And Why? Predicting The Future

4. Data Connection Background Software Development Communications protocols + Higher-level services (“Middleware”) Packaged Solutions Supplier to Major Industry Players, Service Providers and End Users History / Numbers Founded in 1981 Straight line growth ~240 people £21.5M Revenues + £7.3M Profit Products MetaSwitch H.323, SIP, T.120, SNA, ATM, SS7, MPLS, … Messaging and Directory Voice Access to Email, WWW, Content … Conferencing DC-MeetingServer Microsoft NetMeeting, DC-Share for Unix ITU-T Standards Participation – e.g. T.128

5. Conferencing – What Is It? Video/Audio Conferencing Video and Audio – “talking heads” Telephone call “on speed” Collaboration Data Share Applications Whiteboard File Transfer Chat On-line interactive meetings Multipoint over local and wide area Potential Markets Home/Consumer Vertical (e.g. Banking Kiosks) Corporate But depends on Bandwidth e.g. audio requires 5-64 kbits/sec, video requires 150 - 500 kbits/sec Latency Infrastructure

6. Traditional Videoconferencing

7. Desktop Conferencing

8. A Conferencing-Enabled Network

9. Historical Development First Sightings Jetsons, 1962 AT&T PicturePhone – debuted World’s Fair 1964, available 1970, $160/month Compression Labs, 1982, $250,000 system, $1000 per hour to use Group (Room) Systems (early-90s onward) Small Market Tens of thousands of pounds per unit Single purpose hardware and software PictureTel, VTEL, BT, TANDBERG Desktop (Personal) Systems (mid-90s onward) Huge potential market Runs on standard hardware costing £1000 or less Proprietary islands of interoperability Data Connection, Polycom, Microsoft Key Developments (late-90s) Standards: T.120, H.323 Internet / Web conferencing

10. Historical Development Standards H.32x H.320 : ISDN 64kbps x n H.324 : PSTN <28.8kbps H.323 : non-QoS LANS = Internet? T.120 T.122-T.125: MCS/GCC multipoint infrastructure T.126: whiteboard T.127: multipoint file transfer T.128: application sharing T.134/140: chat H.323/T.120 clients Microsoft NetMeeting for Windows – http://www. microsoft .com/windows/ netmeeting / Netopia for Mac – http://www. netopia .com/software/tb2/index.html Data Connection for UNIX Sun Forum – http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/software/ sunforum / SGImeeting – http://www. sgi .com/software/ sgimeeting / HP Visualize Conference – http://www.hp.com/visualize/ fyi / bissue /july99/ newprods . htm IBM AIX DC-Share for Linux - http://www. dcshare .com

11. Conferencing – Who Uses It?

12. Conferencing – Who Uses It? Hewlett Packard Conferencing servers in the US, Japan, Australia, Europe, and Singapore. O ver 100,000 on-line meetings and 12 million minutes of conferencing per month I ncreases teamwork among dispersed employees Saves time and money - between $275,000 and $400,000 per month Budget Rent A Car V irtual classroom between three training labs in Illinois and 127 remote workstation sites across the U.S. Usage has grown steadily, reaching approximately 400,000 minutes in Jan 2001 Training costs have dropped from $2,000 per trainee to $156 More employees are being trained, from 60% to 99% Employee perform ance as good or better than with traditional train ing Return on investment (ROI) achieved in 6 months Merrill Lynch S ervers located in the US, UK, Australia, Japan, and Singapore E nterprise-wide deployment, with over half a million minutes per month of usage Saves over $1 million per year See www.latitude.com/stories

13. Conferencing – Market Status How big? The conferencing services market is projected to approach $14 billion worldwide by 2005, representing a 38% compound annual growth rate over the 2000-2005 time period. (IDC: July 2001) Home Market Low Bandwidth (traditionally) Chat + Audio? Mix of “GrannyPhone” + IRC/Chat + “Adult” Audio/Video is poor to appalling over Internet Vertical Very limited deployment Value-add over proprietary approaches Helpdesks, call centres

14. Conferencing – Market Status (2) Corporate High bandwidth on corporate LANs Variable bandwidth in Intranets Strong bias to data Not enough bandwidth for Audio and – particularly - Video? Can always use the ‘phone! Security / firewalls Corporate “Sell”? Quantifiable benefits: reduced travel costs Non-quantifiable benefits: Improved work practices/productivity Better job satisfaction and employee morale We use it between sites High levels of interest/deployment across sectors: Engineering – Ford, Boeing, BMW, … Military Service Providers

15. Conferencing – Predicting The Future Web clients Rapidly growing sector Lack of standards and bridging to traditional clients like NetMeeting Conference Servers in-house or via ISP security, management bridging communications – IP and PSTN services – web “proxy”, recording Development of infrastructure More bandwidth – e.g. deployment of 100Mbit Ethernet QoS in VPNs predictable bandwidth predictable latency Email was the major corporate growth “technology” of the 90’s ... Conferencing is a major corporate growth “technology” in the new millennium