Video comms take-up on the rise in NZ

Peter Dinham
Thursday, 26 November 2009 08:17

IT Industry - Market

Video communications systems have become much more prevalent in New Zealand businesses with 40 percent of companies investing in the technology in the past 12 months alone, as companies look to bring greater flexibility to work locations.

According to telepresence vendor, Tandberg, the results of its poll of New Zealand businesses, suggests that companies are turning to video communications to not only reduce travel expenses and reduce employee or executive time away from the office, but that they are also seeking to “introduce greater flexibility in work locations and to obtain the HR benefits of deeper, wider recruiting.”

According to Tandberg, desktop video communications also appears to be “coming of age” in New Zealand, with 46 percent of respondents anticipating that their organisation will implement video communications technology onto their employee’s desktops within the next three-to-five years.

Tandberg also says that the poll indicated that unified communications strategies are driving changes with a number of organisations looking for the benefits that video communications technology integrated with Microsoft Office Communicator or Lotus Notes will bring.

The poll also identified the two most popular applications for video communications are executive meetings and internal communications, and Tandberg says that “still almost half of companies use it to communicate with their customers and suppliers and over a third of respondents use the technology for training and human resources (HR) requirements such as candidate interviews.”

Tandberg’s, regional director ANZ, Phil Siefert said that New Zealand has always been an early adopter when it comes to technology, and “that is why we have been surprised that until recently we haven’t seen the same trend as we have in other parts of the globe when it comes to embracing this technology.

“With tight economic times New Zealand businesses seem to have now grasped that video conferencing offers a sure way of improving employee productivity while maintaining tight cost controls.”

Tandberg polled 35 senior New Zealand IT professionals, with the results showing that 86 percent of the respondents are currently using video communications within their organisations, 11 percent investigating the technology and three percent not considering it at all.