Will the Video Conferencing Boom Last?

More and more frequently companies in the United States and abroad are substituting face-to-face meetings with web conferencing and video conferencing services. As travel becomes more expensive and more difficult many companies have invested in these video conference technologies. However, as in the past, while these technologies might see heavy use for a while, eventually when travel becomes less expensive, will video conferencing services be used less and will people return to the more personal face-to-face meetings?

Right now we are clearly once again in a boom phase for videoconferencing. With the high cost of travel and rising energy costs, many businesses are once again taking a very hard look at implementing videoconferencing solutions in the hope of cutting down on travel costs and improving worker productivity.

Unlike past videoconferencing services, the current-generation systems do have a few factors in their favor. For one, the video quality nowadays is much higher than in past systems, providing a much clearer picture of colleagues and meeting associates. The new wave of advanced telepresence videoconferencing rooms use high-definition video, multiple video screens around a table and even integrated lighting to provide a videoconferencing meeting environment that is as close to being there as possible.

The biggest challenge to modern video conferencing systems is the increasing growth of Web 2.0 and social networking-based collaboration tools. For many modern workers, while being able to see a colleague through a video conference is nice, if they have to choose between collaborating in a videoconference without access to Web 2.0 collaboration tools or using Web 2.0 online collaboration tools without video, they’ll often choose the latter.

In order to survive past this current boom cycle, videoconferencing systems will need to be able adapt and integrate with the changing way that modern workers collaborate and meet. For now videoconferencing will continue to rise with the difficulty in airline travel and the rising cost of fuel.