Video conferencing: optimising often sub-optimal situations

While video and software-based collaboration tools have been around for a long time, it’s only in the last 12 months that they’ve really come into their own, as vast numbers of office workers shifted to remote working.

Staying connected with colleagues, working in teams and making the best of a sub-optimal situation has been a challenge for many, but the tools available have made it possible at least.

“At the start of the pandemic in March, April and May last year there was a bit of a scramble as many companies went out into the market and bought up webcams and headsets. We distribute Sennheiser and Logitech, and some companies bought up to 1,000 of them,” said Sean Holohan, managing director of Videnda Distribution.

“Then after the first lockdown, things opened up a bit and people started going back to the office but many others continued to work from home. The big collaboration tools continued to be Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet and Webex, as well as a few others.”

Throughout this period, once initial set up was done and people adapted to a new way of working, the focus shifted onto security and user experience.

“People want the best possible audio and video devices,” said Holohan. “Collaboration is usually something done with software but if someone is working from home, they need the right kit to make it work. At a minimum, they need a good noise cancelling headset, particularly if they’re working from home and have kids homeschooling at the same time.”

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a room they can dedicate to work in their house or apartment, so privacy and security are real concerns.

“You can get a lot done with a noise cancelling headset and a comfortable chair. Next, your solution needs to be able to adapt to where you are. For a portion of last year, people were back in the office and then they were working from home again. The system needed to be able to adapt to that.”

Traditional video conferencing is based on what are known in the trade as ‘room systems,’ based on the idea of a single camera and big screen located in a conferencing room that could be used for meetings.

The pandemic has changed that. Now video systems are expected to be functional on a laptop or mobile device and to be tethered to an individual, not a place.

“Those room systems now need to be able to talk to Teams and Zoom because that’s what a lot of people are using,” said Holohan. “Interoperability is really important. People need to be able to join video calls no matter where they are, based on an invite.

“Actually facilitating this isn’t that hard. If people are at home it’s easy as long as they have half decent broadband. Some systems are proprietary though, like Zoom and Teams, but there are other systems that aren’t.”

According to Shane Heraty, managing director of Cisco Scotland and Ireland, for collaboration technology to work really well, the people who use it must feel connected.

“It’s really important that, when workers are operating remotely, they feel connected and engaged while on calls,” he said. “We’re introducing AI technology now that identifies people’s movements and actions on a call. If you envisage large scale conferencing, if a speaker is looking for a reaction then the audience can give a thumbs up or a wave to say hi.

“Our Webex platform can now identify those interactions coming from an audience to make things more interactive. But it’s also key that you have standardisation of experience and that’s something we're very passionate about. So that’s a single-user interface whether the user is on a mobile device, a tablet, a laptop or if they are using a video conferencing unit.”

Workers want a single sign-on to access a secure end-to-end environment. At the same time, user experience is extremely important.

“Cisco’s strategy is based around the idea of four pillars: the application, security, infrastructure and the empowerment of teams through collaboration technologies. As more and more working is done remotely, it can be the case that the app is the only experience a user is having of an organisation,” Heraty said.

“If that app is not at peak performance then you are potentially damaging brand loyalty. If your application and your online experience is not optimal, people will move to the next option.”

One effect of the move towards remote working and the use of video conferencing and remote collaboration tools is that data usage patterns have changed dramatically. According to Declan Gaffney, director of radio access networks (RAN) for Three, these changes have manifested in a few different ways.

“Mobile network users have always been very consistent and the peak time for voice calls was always at 5pm. Everyone finished work, left the office and pretty much immediately got on their phone to arrange dinner or speak to loved ones but now that’s changed,” he said.

“Now we see a huge jump at nine o'clock in the morning as people ring in to work because they're not in the office any more. The peak for data is still 10 o'clock at night, primarily driven by video. The big consumer of data is not video conferencing but rather things like Netflix, YouTube and all the video on demand services. And as people's connections get better, they're getting higher definition video so it just keeps going up and up.”

Similar changes have happened in where people are accessing these services from. Easons, O’Connell Street and the Ilac Centre in Dublin city centre used to be among the busiest places in the country for data, now that’s migrated to the suburbs of the cities.

“Places like Dublin city centre and Grafton St, which were very busy, have just fallen off a cliff. There have been huge changes. The busiest place for 5G is now in Skerries for example, and outlying places like Greystones etc near Dublin have seen huge growth in data use, which is entirely consistent with the decentralisation of work out of the office and into the home,” said Gaffney.

“The suburbs have taken off. When Covid-19 hit we had to do a u-turn on our plans for rolling out 5G and data capabilities because a lot of sites in suburban areas, regional towns and rural areas just took off. Normally these places are very quiet during the day, but not at the moment.”