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Video Conferencing Buyer's Guide
Use this overview to educate yourself and your teams about all things video conferencing.
Video Conferencing Overview
As your organization continues to scale with a growing employee base, answering the demands for modernized collaboration in remote settings is essential. Your ultimate goal of connecting every level of the workforce requires a fundamental understanding of video conferencing to support flexible, digital communication for distributed teams. Instead of sifting through an assortment of information from various vendors, the following guide will boil down the basics to set you up for video conferencing success.
This comprehensive overview brings the most important elements into your research for implementing a video conferencing solution. From the different types of video conferencing, to internal and external use cases, to expert tips and tricks that drive user adoption — here’s what you’ll learn in this guide.
Types of Video Conferencing
Businesses of all sizes have migrated to the cloud. While PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) audio conferencing played a large role in team collaboration for decades, the advantages of digital communication have reshaped the market with a cloud-hosted model preferred by businesses worldwide.
Although ‘video conferencing’ generally describes virtual meetings between two or more parties, there are specific types that extend from this industry term. Mobile vs. desktop vs. browser-based vs. room system video conferencing all come with additional value for end users and administrators. Learn about the technical differences between video conferencing types and how your workforce benefits from easy-to-use, intelligent solutions.
Video Conferencing Tips
Video conferencing end users represent important stakeholders for the IT organization. Ensuring their familiarity and satisfaction with new technology is paramount to business productivity. In this section, you’ll learn how to get every meeting started on the right foot to optimize the user experience. See these video conferencing tips for the best lighting, layout, and audio recommendations to ensure flawless video conferences and productive meetings.
Video Conferencing Use Cases
Whether your employees need video conferencing to host small 1:1 meetings or larger distributed team sessions, there are many kinds of internal and external uses. Project management, departmental updates, sales forecasts, scrum meetings, and customer calls are just some of the different purposes end users have when hosting or attending video conferences. Learn about these video conference use cases for larger group settings or for smaller two-way video conference conversations all hosted from a single cloud-based technology.
Measuring Video Conferencing Performance
Deploying and maintaining a video conferencing solution is only possible if admins can monitor system health, manage endpoints, and access usage trends. After you’ve completed employee onboarding and training with the new technology, 360-degree visibility into real-time call quality and conferencing insights is critical for measuring performance. Read more about measuring video conference performance and the meeting management dashboards that put system administrators in complete control of their investments.
Benefits of Video Conferencing in a Corporate Culture
Prioritizing a user adoption program bridges the gap between new users and your video conferencing software and hardware. Fortunately, developing this type of training isn’t left solely to IT departments — the highest rated meeting solutions include extensive support documentation and video tutorials to help guide your business. In addition to leveraging these assets, learn about the benefits of video conferencing and what your team can do to properly guide new users through the video conferencing adoption process.
Video Conferencing Vendor Considerations
While many video conferencing vendors are available in today’s marketplace, there are important considerations to keep in mind when selecting a service that will deliver the most value. Use the following feature checklist when surveying different vendors. From hardware and software integrations, to browser support and productivity tools, there’s lots to evaluate when choosing a vendor that meets end user needs and fits well with your existing investments. Here are best-in-class video conferencing features to look for.
Video Conferencing Definitions and Terms
Reference this glossary to educate yourself on all things video conferencing. There’s lots of lingo to learn at first, this will help you sort through the definitions and terms.
What is video conferencing?
Video conferences allow you to send and receive audio, video, and content in a seamless exchange between a variety of endpoints like mobile devices, room systems, laptops, and integrated or peripheral webcams. Unlike traditional audio conferencing and on-premises video systems, today’s meetings are typically hosted by leveraging a secure, cloud-based service.
What are the basic requirements to video conferencing?
The baseline needs for a successful video conference are: A high-definition camera, a CPU, and a reliable internet connection. See below for technical video conferencing requirements:
RAM: Minimum 4GB. 8GB+ recommended
Bandwidth Requirements: The following table outlines various scenarios and their expected, peak bandwidth utilization.
| Scenario | Bandwidth Utilization |
|---|---|
| Content + Audio + Video being sent | Up to 4.5 Mbps |
| Content + Audio being sent | Up to 4.3 Mbps |
| Only content being sent | Up to 3Mbps |
Notes: The preferred minimum bandwidth requirement to achieve 720p is 1Mbps.
750Kbps is recommended for an overall quality experience with audio and video over IP.
How do I set up video conferencing?
In huddle spaces and office rooms, simply connect your conferencing system to your TV monitor and activate it with your meetings account. For remote users, download the web conferencing app onto your desktop or mobile device and enable all audio and video sources you’d like to use during your conferences.