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The Network Videoconferencing<br />
for them. We’ve seen many of our<br />
customers solve this by saying they’ll<br />
just use whatever their customers use<br />
– WebEx, or Google Hangouts, for<br />
example. Ultimately, though,<br />
that breaks, because<br />
you have so many<br />
different tools, each<br />
department chooses<br />
what it wants to<br />
use, and you can’t<br />
possibly support all<br />
of them.”<br />
The key, then, is<br />
interoperability, and<br />
thankfully that’s<br />
something that the<br />
industry understands. The<br />
big players all sit on standards<br />
bodies, and they support rival<br />
services wherever possible –<br />
including Skype for Business<br />
and Lync, such is the power of<br />
Office 365. In most cases, you can<br />
purchase your first camera, mic or<br />
whole-room system without having<br />
to worry about locking yourself out<br />
of any of the major video platforms,<br />
and you can generally move from one<br />
supplier to another, taking your<br />
hardware with you.<br />
It’s a principle that’s helped Swiss<br />
videoconferencing giant Logitech<br />
grow to a dominant market position<br />
in just four years. Rather than trying<br />
to tie customers into a conferencing<br />
service of its own, the company<br />
provides hardware that serves as an<br />
“on-ramp” to whichever providers<br />
you might want to use.<br />
“We were the first company to<br />
come to the market with that<br />
philosophy, of not making the<br />
software or the service, so our<br />
hardware works equally well with<br />
every platform,” said Logitech head of<br />
marketing, Joan Vandermate. The<br />
focus is on professional-grade<br />
feature support: “Businessgrade<br />
video tools support<br />
more callers, and have a<br />
more flexible layout,”<br />
Vandermate said.<br />
“You can use multiple<br />
screens with large<br />
groups, and use<br />
active speaker modes,<br />
so if you want the CEO<br />
full screen and people<br />
asking questions on a film<br />
strip, you can.”<br />
Secure and<br />
stable<br />
What about security?<br />
If you’re using<br />
third-party hardware,<br />
rather than getting your<br />
hardware and services from a<br />
single supplier, are you increasing the<br />
risk of hacker attacks or data leaks?<br />
Not at all, believes Vandermate. “The<br />
encryption applied to your active<br />
call is handled by the provider from<br />
which you’re buying the service.<br />
Most business-grade services have a<br />
fail-safe, too: if encryption is turned<br />
on at one end point, you won’t be able<br />
to make the call unless the other<br />
endpoint is turned on as well.”<br />
It’s worth noting, however, that<br />
maximum security isn’t always<br />
available. “In some areas, we’re not<br />
allowed to deliver encrypted devices<br />
for legal reasons,” Hug explained. One<br />
of those areas is Russia, from which he<br />
“It’s crucial that managers<br />
and decision-makers can<br />
discuss business-sensitive<br />
issues without worrying<br />
about leaks”<br />
BELOW Younger<br />
employees already<br />
use services such as<br />
Google Hangouts in<br />
their private lives<br />
was speaking. “For most customers, in<br />
the majority of countries, encryption<br />
is automatically applied. If someone<br />
joins who can’t be encrypted, their<br />
connection won’t be, but the others<br />
still will.”<br />
Consequently, it’s no surprise that<br />
videoconferencing providers take<br />
security so seriously. It’s crucial that<br />
managers and decision-makers can<br />
discuss business-sensitive<br />
issues without worrying<br />
about leaks. When<br />
choosing a supplier, ask<br />
specifically how they<br />
handle encryption: they<br />
shouldn’t be afraid to<br />
discuss it.<br />
Another consideration is the<br />
physical security of the infrastructure.<br />
“We run on IBM software and Amazon<br />
Web Services,” revealed Lifesize’s<br />
Helmbrecht, “but even we’ve never<br />
been inside any of the 20-plus data<br />
centres where we operate, because we<br />
simply can’t get access. This isn’t a<br />
scenario where we’re in a co-located<br />
data centre, where a sales manager<br />
can walk in with a server under his<br />
arm and plug it in. We use lights-off,<br />
ISO 27000-compliant data centres,<br />
where they can’t access our software<br />
layer and we can’t access their<br />
hardware layer.”<br />
User buy-in<br />
The practical and financial benefits of<br />
videoconferencing are clear enough<br />
that getting buy-in from IT and<br />
management is rarely a problem.<br />
However, what about the users who<br />
are being asked to embrace a new<br />
mode of communication?<br />
“When people have used a certain<br />
tool in a certain way for the majority<br />
of their career, getting them to change<br />
is exceedingly difficult,” admitted<br />
Helmbrecht. “Getting someone to give<br />
up their BT number is tough, which is<br />
why we spend a lot of time on<br />
interoperability and ease-of-use. You<br />
have to tear down barriers that the<br />
incumbent vendor doesn’t have to<br />
overcome, because no matter how bad<br />
the experience is, it’s familiar. Even if<br />
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