Over a third of businesses are planning to up their spend on video conferencing solutions this year, according to a new survey.

A poll by technology firm TechTarget has indicated that 34 per cent of businesses will raise their video conferencing budget and more than half of these will do so by more than 10 per cent. According to computerweekly.com, this is in spite of IT budgets as a whole remaining flat.

Reacting to the results, industry analyst Ira M. Weinstein predicted that it was only a matter of time before video conferencing became an essential service for businesses.

He told techtarget.com: “Technology-wise, we are there but we’re not there yet in terms of culture. We’ve built the stadium; we’re just waiting for people to come.”

Weinstein was also keen to add that video conferencing was likely to become a more popular service once it is integrated into other business services.   

“The actual destination for video conferencing is not [as] an [individual] application, but rather it belongs behind other applications,” he claimed.

The TechTarget survey questioned 445 IT professionals about their investment plans for their next 24 months.

Business video conferencing could replace up to 20 per cent of “ritual face-to-face” meetings within two years, according to Zibrant – a meetings and events experts.

Conference-News.co.uk reports that this trend will be encouraged by firms who wish to keep up a visual presence with their clientèle whilst deploying business-wide cost cutting measures.

Fay Sharpe, managing director of sales and marketing for Zibrant, also believes that training employees to use video conferencing facilities is going to be a must.

“The skill in making the most of remote meetings is subtle,” Sharpe said on Zibrant.com. “Many visual cues, for example, will at worst be missing altogether or at best much harder to read, so there needs to be greater awareness and sensitivity to how delegates are reacting to what it being said.

Sharpe added that even on the phone, “a lot of the nuances of vocal tone are also lost.”

Although Sharpe is confident in her convictions, the expert said that video conferencing is unlikely to replace meetings in the early stages of a business venture. This is because it can be hard to create “trust and rapport” online. Therefore, video solutions are more suitable for those who already have active projects set up.

“Once a degree of familiarity has been established, there are typically far fewer obstacles to routinely keeping on top of projects without the need for face to face,” she explained.

Video conferencing could prove vital for companies when it comes to their disaster recovery communications, according to a Wainhouse Research representative.

Speaking to Search Unified Communications, Ira Weinstein – the partner and senior analyst for the market research firm – explained why the benefits of video conferencing extend far beyond the replacement of business travel.

“Video collaboration is about immediate access to global resources for disaster recovery,” Weinstein added. It can help branches of a firm in different time zones keep in touch with developments in the situation and also keep a business going in the event of a disaster, as a company can “only put so many experts in the same place”.

The same can be said for many different industries, the article went on to say and in many different disaster situations. “Now, we can have HD-quality video conferences in an area that may not have towers or even running water,” Weinstein added.

Given that it is tremendously difficult to predict when a national or global disaster might occur, having the technology on hand can combat any difficulties faced in arranging transport to a particular area.

What’s more, combining these video conferencing abilities with a data backup on the cloud could prove to be the perfect disaster recovery combination. Utilising such backup services could help get “multitudes of systems up and running quickly,” Virtualizationreview.com revealed.

Manchester City Council is one of a number of local authorities planning to communicate using video conference services in the near future.  

Town hall bosses in Manchester are reportedly keen on an adaptation of the technology in order to cut travel costs and lower their carbon footprint.

The move is thought to be partly in response to a recent document released by the council detailing how they plan to cut CO2 levels in the city by 40 per cent in the next 10 years.

Nigel Murphy, who is the Manchester City Council’s executive member for the environment, claimed it was important for councillors to set the example in order for the city to achieve such a goal.

Speaking to The Manchester Evening News, he said: “Reducing the amount of carbon emissions the council produces is a key part of our plan to tackle climate change across Manchester.

“We’ve now become one of the first authorities to place this right at the heart of how we develop our services – and to monitor what each department is doing to cut carbon emissions.”

Publicservice.co.uk report that Essex County Council are in talks to initiate a similar carbon-saving scheme, whilst Bristol City Council are also hoping to introduce such measures.

Increasingly, business schools are adopting video conferencing not only to aid their teaching, but also to appeal to the latest generation of business professionals.

That’s according to a report from the Financial Times, which used the Boston University School of Management as a prime example.

It is turning to video conferencing and telepresence to help facilitate its teaching; not only in terms of learning, but also with regards to securing guest speakers for important engagements. Guest appearances from executives can prove “much easier to co-ordinate” with this technology, Tony O’Driscoll, a business professor, claimed.

“This technology allows us to get higher profile business people to participate more often,” O’Driscoll revealed in the report, which was also cited by Bu.edu.

Called the “future of management education” by the Financial Times, it seems this type of video technology is more popular than ever. It can help provide “deeper learning”, Professor Venkatraman of Boston University stated. He also implied that it can help improve engagement with business students eager to learn the craft.

Although the academics did admit that there can be bumps in the road in terms of technical glitches, overall they believe the use of video conferencing can benefit the latest generation of students – one which has been “weaned on Facebook” and other digital phenomena.

As well as benefiting employees, the implementation of flexible working policies can lift an organisation as a whole.

That’s according to Dr Graeme Codrington, futurist at Tomorrowtoday.uk.com, who believes that through encouraging remote working, perhaps through services like video conferencing or e-mail, businesses can become more flexible and boost staff retention as a result.

“Flexibility has been a consistent top-rated engagement policy in research for at least the last decade, so anything employers can do to increase flexibility will gain rewards in engagement and staff retention,” he said.

Dr Codrington also highlighted the cost reduction in implementing flexible working. By cutting out the morning and evening commutes, businesses will notice an improvement in productivity and efficiency in their staff.

Furthermore, it’s not just young workers that can take advantage of flexible working practices. The “baby boomer generation” are coming to retirement age but don’t want to stop working – at least not entirely. Dr Codrington believes that many will want to continue working from home rather than exiting the world of work entirely, claiming older workers are going to “get a taste for remote working and they’re probably going to like it”.

Martin Palmer, a representative of financial service provider Friends Life, cited by agequityrelease.com, agrees with Dr Codrington: “[The home] could double-up as the workplace for many senior citizens.”