Tandberg Summit 2008: Video killed the radio star

There was a New Age vibe at the Tandberg Summit 2008 held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Sydney. Tandberg, the telepresence, videoconferencing and mobile video services provider, has taken a unique approach at this year’s partner conference by delving into the importance of relationships, making connections and utilising positive energy. The theme of collaboration featured heavily in many of the keynotes and case studies presented between 13-14 March.

A highlight of the conference was a keynote by Ross Dawson, chairman of Future Exploration Network, who provided insight into the dynamics within an organisation and the video communications market. Referring to internal business practices, Dawson stressed the importance of collaboration between employees and identifying personal qualities that may help foster growth.

“You need to be aware of individuals who are highly competent, people you can draw on who offer something that is useful to you. You also need to be visible yourself,” he explained. “Those who have more diverse personal networks are more successful.”

Dawson then took a thoughtful look at ‘energy’ projected by individuals that can influence the productivity of an organisation – and you would have been forgiven for confusing the keynote for a New Age motivational seminar.

“When you think about an organisation as a network, there are some people who are energisers, out of which energy flows in all directions. Then there are people who are de-energisers, the black holes who suck all the energy out of everybody they touch,” he explained. “Energisers are collaborative, they want to work with others and want to get the best job done and these are the things we need to consider when we bring people on board.”

To simplify his philosophical musings, Dawson listed a few key actions organisations can adopt to facilitate collaboration, which he linked to Tandberg technology.

“Make it easy for organisations to engage, video conferencing is absolutely a really important part of that, it’s the foundation. Also being able to collaborate, work together and build relationships makes it easy for people to make connections.”

Dawson went on to speak more generally about the economy and how the current unstructured climate is mimicked within organisations. Using Web 2.0 to illustrate his point, he provided the analogy of Wikipedia and its predecessor Nupedia. The structured nature of Nupedia, which provided a methodical means of contributing content, resulted in the platform’s demise whereas Wikipedia has thrived based on a more unstructured framework, he stated.

“By not being so structured, this extraordinary thing developed,” he said, referring to Wikipedia. “Those organisations sticking to a very dogmatic structure are clearly failing. More and more we’re going to see the difference between those organisations where executives understand that to be able to grow and develop and be successful in an unstructured world you can’t control things, a structure will emerge on its own.”

Dawson’s central message combined his initial discussion surrounding collaboration with the importance of embracing an unstructured methodology to add more value. However, he cautioned that to determine the degree to which a Web 2.0 collaborative environment is beneficial or harmful to a business is dependent on its skills base and culture.

“We need to redefine an organisation’s boundaries. In a modular economy you can start to become more innovative,” he said. “However, the infinite players play with boundaries and it’s not just the boundaries within an organisation but how will we draw on our strengths to move into new areas and new domains.”

According to Dawson, Tandberg video conferencing offerings are designed to help organisations fulfill these aims by providing tools that will bolster productivity in an unrestrictive way.

“[Through video conferencing] they are able to extend their senses, extend their reach and build stronger relationships while still being highly efficient,” he said.

Phil Siefert, country manager A/NZ at Tandberg, then took the stage to detail the vendor’s activities locally. He stated that the market for visual communications in Australia is approximately US$61billion and there were several opportunities for resellers to get a piece of the pie, particularly in the area of IT support.

He acknowledged that Tandberg has to contend with what he refers to as “two big gorillas in the room” – Microsoft and Cisco – and as a result the vendor has chosen to form strategic alliances.

“These two competitors drive us to be faster, better and differentiate more to improve our services in the marketplace,” he said. “The need to have certifications with Microsoft and Cisco is driven by the requirement for integration in existing platforms.”

Tandberg has a diverse range of verticals including healthcare, education, finance and banking, and government. Siefert explained that High Definition is currently experiencing high demand and the vendor is also noticing traction in the market in PC video, Zip integration as well as OCS integration, which Microsoft is selling as a collaborative tool.

To gain a better understanding of the video communications market in Australia and the relevance to the local channel, CRN spoke to Adam Britten, channel manager at Tandberg about the event.

Britten related the value of partner conferences such as the Tandberg Summit, having already received positive feedback from participating partners and end-users.

“Specifically from a partner perspective, it’s a great opportunity to see what’s driving video conferencing in the visual communications market and what the future holds for the technology,” he said.

The concept of ‘visual identity’ was a theme that emanated from the presentations over the two-day event. Britten explained that when applied to both individuals and organisations it helped explain the value of video conferencing and other visual tools.

“We look at how visual communications can help your identity, whether that means representing it out in public media such as YouTube, or whether it’s internal human resources and culture throughout the organisation,” he said.

The Tandberg channel program dubbed NVision provides partner certification, demo facilities, customer support as well as sales and marketing tools. Rather than focusing specifically on Tandberg products, the program also takes into account an organisation’s broader network and the video market in general.

“The channel program is very much around the transfer of knowledge. We want to see partners better educated, not only in our technology but also the visual communications market, and how it fits into the other markets out there such as Unified Communications and the progression to IP,” said Britten. “We’re educating partners on what that means from a sales and technical perspective and we give them the tools to be able to go out and leverage that.”

Unified Communications (UC) in particular is an area of interest for the vendor. As the market prepares for a surge in demand for UC technology, Tandberg is looking to develop its own offerings to capitalise on this growth.

“The market is moving into Unified Communications practices and Tandberg visual communications is an essential part of that. If you look at the UC messaging coming from vendors, video conferencing is a core pillar,” said Britten.

He explained that when you consider email, unified messaging and VoIP; video is a logical extension of those technologies. Strategic alliances with Microsoft, Avaya and Nortel appear conducive to cultivating Tandberg’s UC interests.

“Video fits in well with [Alliance partners’] UC product sets and platforms and gives us global presence within these organisations,” he explained. “We do a lot of co-development, for example with Microsoft there was a recent announcement about our integration with its OCS 2007.”

However, Britten claimed the greatest opportunity in the local market lies in the transition to IP. Another issue that is front of mind for both Tandberg and its customers at the moment is Green technology, he stated.

“The movement around Green technology both here and globally also presents opportunities. Corporate responsibility is starting to be mandated into organisations as we see government regulations emerge. Video is a great technology to help reduce an organisation’s carbon footprint,” he said.

In its first environmental sustainability review, Tandberg pledged to reduce its carbon footprint from air travel by 10 percent per employee by 2009. It also plans to reduce its energy use per square foot of office space by 10 percent. According to the vendor, this Green approach can be extended to customers through increased use of videoconferencing.

Cisco also recently touted the savings it has made with virtual meetings. John Chambers, chief executive officer for Cisco, and Al Gore appeared at VoiceCon 2008 in Orlando in March by using Cisco’s TelePresence systems and spoke about the potential of high-quality videoconferencing to provide a viable solution for businesses looking to cut expenses and carbon emissions.

It seems like a good time to be in the videoconferencing market as businesses are increasingly deploying UC and telepresence solutions. Examining how video conferencing fits into the ‘bigger picture’, not only in terms of a company’s network but also the overall IT industry, may be the key differentiator for Tandberg in this market.