BYOD Trend Is Impacting the Growth of Video Conferencing Market

Video conferencing, which sparked in the late 1990s, has proved to be a valuable asset for a large number of enterprises; as they are showing an interest to deploy mobile video conferencing solutions and platforms to improve business collaboration. Verticals like healthcare, banking, technology, telecom, and government, among others have been largely adopting video conferencing solutions (on-premises or hosted) largely because of cost pressures as well as long term goals of adopting new technologies. Also, if used in an increasingly effective manner it can streamline decision making and enhance customer experience.

There has been a drastic shift from voice to visual conferencing tools. With top executives now indulging in the use of multiple smartphones and tablets, video conferencing has crossed the traditional boardroom boundaries and is changing to accommodate mobile users by transforming the growth of video conferencing in India through a concept called, ‘BYOD'.

According to Gartner, BYOD is an alternative strategy that allows employees, business partners, and other users to use a personally selected mobile device to execute enterprise applications and access data. BYOD is slowly becoming an acceptable standard across business verticals because it leads to reduced costs for the organization and also enhances employee satisfaction since it allows them to be comfortable with the technology of their choice. Looking at the benefits provided by BYOD, the forward-thinking, innovative companies are embracing employee-owned devices, and setting up company-wide models, programs and policies to support the trend rather than fighting it. According to a global survey of CIOs by Gartner, 38% of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2017. Driving innovation and curtailing operating costs over time are surely being touted as the ultimate objectives of BYOD. SMEs present a huge potential for video conferencing and are expected to spend significantly on video conferencing due to recently implemented BYOD programs, which will increase of the number of mobile users and affordable technology. With mobility becoming ubiquitous, BYOD in India is encouraging the use of personal devices at workplaces to ensure 24/7 work from any location. Because of this, video conferencing seems to be headed towards increased mobile video conferencing way so employees can join meetings outside of the office. The latest mobile video conferencing solution can play up to 1080p on laptops, 720p on mobile devices also with NAT/firewall traversal for secure communications.

When selecting the right mobile video conferencing solution for your business, it is important to choose a vendor that can support as many tablets, smartphones and personal desktop computers as possible, so employees have a true choice when selecting their own device.

Additionally, consider a solution that can link of an employee's devices together so when someone is trying to reach them, all of their devices will ring simultaneously. By having these features in place, you can maximize your video conferencing investment and get the most out of a BYOD program. According to Gartner, iPad users are slated to reach 1 billion by 2015 and smartphone users expected to be around 2.5 billion by the same time, hence the future of mobile video conferencing seems to be extremely bright and will enable enterprises to look at mobile video conferencing from a unique prospective to increase connectivity amongst all stakeholders.

Based on current research, the opportunity for mobile video conferencing is evident in almost all verticals ranging from healthcare to education in both private as well as government sectors. After taking into account all the developments it can be successfully said that BYOD and mobile video conferencing can gain a strong foothold in enterprises.