Customizing a Video Conference Solution for Your Business

By Kristine Hegglin
Updated: February 14, 2011

Types of Video Conferencing Solutions

A video conference solution provides an effective and efficient way to communicate with employees located all over the world. And, businesses can save on employee travel costs by implementing a video conference solution. There are two types of video conference solutions:

1. Point-to-Point: A point-to-point solution enables businesses to establish employee communication between two geographic locations. For example, an employee or employees located in Florida can video conference with an employee located in Hong Kong.
2. Multi-Point: A multi-point solution enables employees in three or more geographic locations to establish a video conference.

Video Conferencing Set Up Options

Video conferencing solutions come in many forms. Employees can use their desktops to video conference by installing software, adding a microphone, and setting up a video camera with speakers. This type of solution is inexpensive and might be suitable for a small business. A more elaborate and expensive video conferencing solution involves a dedicated system. Dedicated systems are a good choice for medium and large sized businesses. The computer network connects employees located in different geographic locations using IP networks. With Internet protocol (IP) networks, employees can establish a video conference through an IP address.

Configuring a Video Conferencing Solution

There are numerous ways video conferencing solutions can be configured. Video conferencing solutions can be pre-configured with destinations. For example, if a CEO in Redwood City, California wants to connect to a partner in Boston, Massachusetts, the Boston contact can be pre-configured and saved to make the connection easy for any novice user. Other configuration options depend on the speed of the link to the remote office. For example, if a business has an office location with a low bandwidth, this destination can be configured to use less bandwidth. Voice throughput is generally more important than video quality. And, less bandwidth will mean less video quality.

When businesses implement a multi-point video conferencing solution, they can configure their solution to enable screen preference for the communicating location. For example, if an employee in Redwood City is video conferencing with an employee in Boston and an employee in Hong Kong, the one of the three employees that is talking will be given screen preference. So, if the Hong Kong employee is talking, he or she will appear large on the screen and the employee in Redwood City and the employee in Boston will appear on the screen, but in smaller form.