Stephen Epstein, CMO, Avistar Communications: Technology Trends - Interview

Stephen Epstein, Chief Marketing Officer, of unified visual communications industry innovation company Avistar Communications Corporation, was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about the rapidly growing field of desktop videoconferencing. He describes the reasons for companies using videoconferencing and shared some of the advantages and disadvantages of the system. He also gazed into the crystal ball and shared some of his thoughts on the future of videoconferencing, BYOD, and of communications in general.

Thanks to Stephen Epstein for his informative and comprehensive answers.

Thanks as well to Norman Birnbach of Birbach Communications, Inc. for his assistance in facilitating this interview.

One term we hear a lot about these days is BYOD. What is BYOD?

Stephen Epstein: BYOD is the acronym for Bring Your Own Device. Wikipedia describes it as “the policy of permitting employees to bring personally owned mobile devices (laptops, tablets, and smart phones) to their workplace, and use those devices to access privileged company information and applications.[1] Since the onset of intuitive, consumer personal productivity devices, employees have increasingly wanted to bring their consumer technology to work and apply it to their day-to-day jobs.

This has traditionally run counter to internal IT policies and procedures, which have been set up to ensure business-class security, integration and uniformity across the entire organization. These policies are evolving as these devices have become more prevalent and trends such as mobile workers, working from home, better smartphones and tablets, and “we’ve got an app for that” have emerged.

How is BYOD making its presence known in the work environment?

Stephen Epstein: We think BYOD will become the accepted approach to office technology in 2013. BYOD delivers more flexibility while driving down costs in an organization. Additionally, BYOD has moved from a “nice to do” to a “must do” in organizations, as it is viewed as a way to keep employees happy and more productive. Most employees expect to BYOD and have them sync with their corporate technology. The fact is that consumer technology can be more powerful and easier to use than corporate technology today.



Stephen Epstein (photo left)

How does videoconferencing play in all this?

Stephen Epstein: Many consumer devices today already have a proprietary videoconferencing element, but typically work only between same-brand devices. What is happening now is the bringing of people together through a seamless, interoperable and reliable voice and videoconferencing experience via the cloud -- and Avistar is the only company that can do this today. We make videoconferencing available anywhere, to anyone on any device. This is changing the way business application and service providers, communications solutions and business partners are delivering voice and videoconferencing features to their clients and end users.

Where does videoconferencing go from here?

Stephen Epstein: As videoconferencing in the cloud increases in 2013, we will see traditional hardware-based videoconferencing vendors make some tough decisions. Selling off assets, getting out the business, or morphing into software-only videoconferencing vendors are just some of the tough decisions hardware vendors will need to make as software-based videoconferencing becomes the new normal.

We expect the cloud to bring about an increase in videoconferencing services and capabilities, driven in part by BYOD and the necessity to make apps and access available to employees regardless of the device or platform they’re using. In fact, we expect cloud-based B2B videoconferencing to become so big over the next several years that the sector will be mostly comprised of either cloud-based vendors or on-premise vendors, with little overlap because the tech requirements are so different. However, we think customers will want solutions that offer a choice of cloud-based, on-premise and a hybrid solution offering both.

What other trends do you see on the horizon?

Stephen Epstein: As videoconferencing becomes as second nature as talking on the (BYOD) smartphone or traditional telephone, we see a couple of other related trends emerging:

• Working from home: This will become mainstream. According to Home-Based Workers in the United States: 2010, a recent Census Bureau report, 9.5 percent of the U.S. workforce – 4.2 million Americans – work from home. That’s an increase of 2 million, a jump from 7.8 percent in 2005. The growing population of employees who work at least part of the week from their homes is another reason for companies to embrace BYOD because BYOD can enhance productivity and collaboration, even or especially when employees work from home.

• The rise of Chief Mobility Officers. As nearly half of the world’s population is projected to be mobile users by 2018, companies will shift from being PC-centric to being Post-PC- or smartphone/tablet-centric. We expect companies will hire chief mobility officers to break down silos between development, sales, marketing and IT to enable companies to offer a seamless mobile approach to em