Will Microsoft Surface Change the Face of Mobile Video Conferencing?

With Microsoft announcing the launch of the Windows 8 based "Surface" tablet they have seen a gap in the market. Tablet computing has hit the consumer market by storm with Apple and Samsung being the major players, but within the enterprise market there has been little penetration. Blackberry and Cisco have both failed miserably with their Playbook and CIUS whilst Apple and Samsung still do not have the features being demanded by IT security and infrastructure departments.

In the enterprise world a new laptop for example must work with existing management and security tools and it must be able to run the company's existing applications. These are often internally developed applications designed to run on Windows. This will be key to the success of Surface within the enterprise.

The Microsoft difference should allow enterprises to continue to use their same management toolset and internal applications but just extend the profiles to include "Surface" users. When "Surface" can be treated no differently to a laptop then it makes the case for implementation becomes a whole lot easier.

The Surface, will no doubt come with MS Lync embedded which will bolster Microsoft's penetration into unified communications and videoconferencing. Adding connectivity to video conferencing gateway will allow Surface to participate in video conference calls with any room based system, iPad, iPhone, Desktop or Mac both within and outside of the organisation.

By far the majority of laptop users in the enterprise also have a desktop PC it will be interesting to see the impact that Surface will have on traditional standalone video conferencing devices and on desktop video conferencing. It makes much more sense to have video conferencing running on Surface and remove the additional desktop appliance all together and that follows why would I want video conferencing installed on my PC at all taking up valuable screen real estate?

It is clear from the exterior design; to the magnetic cover of the Surface that Microsoft intend to go head to head with Apple but also providing some extras like USB 3 in the Pro version.

Questions do remain:

How will Microsoft price the Surface? - Will they be pitching at the iPad pricing, laptop pricing or some kind of middle ground?

How will Windows 8 be received by the enterprise? - The majority of enterprise leapt from XP to Windows 7. Will they be willing to have a mixed OS environment?

Apple are clearly the leaders with mobile apps. and hardware desirability. Will Microsoft be able to make a respectable dent in this?

Mark Stainton-James is a recognised technology leader with over 20 years of experience in managing global teams and setting technology strategy for many of the worlds leading financial institutions.

http://www.vceverywhere.com/ is a video conferencing exchange provider allowing any video conferencing endpoint to communicate with any other end point regardless of platform.

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Significance of Mobile Video Conferencing

 With the growth and development of the mobile industry, every technology in the world is being rewritten for Mobile. With the improving smartphones, one can expect some great improvement for VOIP and conference calls. Business professionals are demanding a mobile solution that delivers the same features of video conferencing at low costs, without any call drops or lags. As technological advancements continue to develop at a neck-breaking pace, the reliable mobile solution is growing at a fast rate. The mobile conferencing technology allows the business professionals to make audio and video calls, send text messages, multimedia messages and emails from their devices. Many companies are expected to provide customized high speed data transfer plans to corporate firms, which will enable seamless voice and video calls with high resolution, excellent sound clarity and no lag on handheld gadgets.

Keeping this thing in mind, some companies extended the value of these conferencing systems by providing an option of mobile conferencing. There is a need of mobile conferencing in many industries and domains. For example, in major companies like manufacturing and energy, the heart of the business is the floor of the plant, the oil rig or the wind farm. But, these are the places where traditional conferencing rooms don't reach. With the help of mobile video conferencing technology, workers can stream live video with the help of mobile conferencing camera and get connected to the experts who are off-site at either their desks or conference rooms.

The idea of mobile conferencing on devices like smartphones is underway. The iPhone and Android devices have seen a third party software development that led to breakthroughs in mobile conferencing. There are some limitations to the development of portable video conferencing. They are - bandwidth and the hardware. These two limitations can be overcome by the advances in the network and phone design. The 3G networks have improved the data transfer speeds, due to which the mobile video conferencing technology expands in terms of features and quality. At the same time, manufacturers are cramming more powerful chips inside the handsets, along with accessories like - mini video cameras to provide conferencing experience.

The handset manufacturing companies in the world are thinking to provide a wireless video conferencing option to extend the value of their infrastructure. In other words, we can say there are very few companies in the market which offer video conference calls via Mobile. With the help of the technology developed by these companies, one can -

Stream Video directly via your mobile phone.Call using OctroTalk or regular cell phone to convert it into a Video Conference Call.Make conference calls using GPRS/CDMA/3G/WiFi.

The mobile industry is taking baby steps and some major companies are in the midst of developing a fully featured smartphone video conferencing strategy; and it became easy to integrate a mobile conferencing camera into an existing infrastructure.

Endeavour has developed many successful applications for many Fortune 500 companies around the world and is the most preferred mobile application development company by their esteemed clients. The clients that approach Endeavour for deploying mobility enterprise solutions have been happy with the services that they have received. The leading satire newspaper of the US, The Onion has congratulated Endeavour technical team for their work on the newspaper app that is successfully launched in the Google play market and istores.

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