Avistar Thinks Video Communication Needs a Software Solution

Promoters of emerging communication technologies have a major message challenge: They need a shorthand way to explain what their new form of communication does for people. It's best if they can say it's like existing technologies, only better. With business video communication, the most obvious angle is to liken the experience to voice telephony. New technical models, though, always differ from existing ones. Thus comparing video to voice communication glosses over technical and other issues that may prove problematic in practice. Avistar Communications Corp., for one, is pushing a software-only approach to video communication, with a message that contrasts with those of most other players.

Most of the burgeoning business video communication industry currently focuses on one of two approaches. The first is room-based video conferencing systems, including the high-end products known as telepresence systems. The second is desktop videophones. The former resembles sitting around a conference-room table equipped with a speakerphone or specialized conference phone, but with visual communication added. The latter is like using a deluxe IP desk phone that is also equipped with video screen, microphone and camera. On the surface, both approaches seem to be little more than video-enhanced versions of familiar voice telephony experiences. But in fact they come with significant disadvantages compared to traditional telephony.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Avistar, by contrast, provides video communication software that runs on PCs equipped with Web cams. As such, it more closely resembles voice services such as Skype, Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger that run on instant messaging platforms, or VoIM, than it does traditional telephony. Avistar also provides video call handling software that runs on existing corporate servers, as opposed to the hardware-based multipoint control units, or MCUs, that most video conferencing vendors offer. Combined, Avistar's client and server software provide end-to-end video calling capability.

Avistar thinks a software-based approach is the only path to real ubiquity. For one thing, compared to the voice telephony experiences they emulate, room- and videophone-based systems limit the number of people who can use them. Desktop videophones can cost hundreds of dollars, while room-based systems can run hundreds of thousands, and also consume substantial bandwidth. Thus affordability factors alone exclude huge numbers of potential users. Even when the hardware is available, accessibility can exclude many more. To use such systems, employees have to be at their desks or offices. That eliminates anyone who works remotely or is on the road. Software-based systems, by contrast, are available to everyone anywhere who has access to a Web cam-equipped PC with a basic broadband link.

Avistar also thinks room and videophone systems have disadvantages in delivering the non-verbal cues and messages that video communication is supposed to promote. For example, videophones have fairly small screens, which makes it harder to detect subtleties of facial expressions. And while room systems have large screens, they also have to cover a lot of people. Thus the number of pixels devoted to each face is relatively small. With PC-based systems, by contrast, a single face may be visible at almost full size.

Avistar CTO Chris Lauwers even contends that, image size aside, PC-based video communication is still more effective at enhancing communication than other approaches. People on any kind of call, he argues, are typically doing things on their PC screens at the same time. With a voice call, there's no inherent conflict between the two kinds of activities – one just tucks the phone under one's chin. But hardware-based video calling changes the paradigm. With a desktop videophone, it requires looking back and forth between the PC screen and the phone. With a room system, it probably means switching attention between laptops and the screen and camera. With PC-based systems, on the other hand, the image is in the screen, right below the camera and right next to whatever one is working on. That could conceivably be screen-sharing images or CRM data.

In fact, customers have shown considerable interest in combining video calling with CRM applications, according to Lauwers. Thus Avistar is working on integrating its products with commercial CRM systems, so that video windows appear within the data windows that pop up when calls come in to customer service or sales reps. That will let reps see the customers and their sales and calling histories at the same time. This capability also reinforces Avistar's belief that software is the only way to go, because only a software-based approach allows such flexibility and integration with other applications.

Ultimately, Avistar believes, PC-based video calling will dilute demand for room-based systems, because more people will prefer to participate from their desks than from a large room. Because it would also make one-to-one video calling more common, Avistar prefers to use the term video communication rather than video conferencing to describe the medium it is promoting.

Avistar makes a big deal out of its embrace of open standards, namely SIP, which allows its products to work with those of other vendors. Thus companies can use Avistar software end points with SIP-capable hardware-based systems, or use its conferencing platform software with hardware-based end points.

Related to its focus on software is Avistar's emphasis on email-like rather than telephony-like methods of making contact. Rather than pushing for everyone to have phone number-style identifiers and look each up in directories, Avistar thinks it's enough for video callers to have SIP URI-based email-like addresses. These would take the form of username@companyname.com. In order for individuals to call each other, they will have to first exchange their identifiers. But that's what they do today with email, and it hasn't slowed the growth of that medium.

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