Digital collaboration methods such as virtual meetings, video conferencing and even video chat services are quickly outpacing traditional forms of communications among UK businesses, according to a survey conducted by Forrester Research.

As reported by Computer Weekly, the use of video conferencing services and other types of video collaboration by UK employees grew by 72% in the past year. Similarly a total of 74% of businesses and enterprises surveyed said that their use of web conferencing tools had grown in comparison to last year.

These findings fulfil some of the predictions made by Forrester for the top technology trends to watch out for over the next three years. Published in PC World Business centre last week, these predictions included widespread use of telepresence and the development of people-centric collaboration platforms.

This move towards virtual communication methods can be partially accounted for by another finding from the report; although most enterprise and SME businesses believe face to face meetings are effective at relationship building, just under half (43%) said they were often inconvenient.

“The survey identifies that there is a real opportunity for virtual collaboration technologies to replace the best aspects of physical meetings, at the same avoiding many of the inefficiencies and frustrations of face-to-face meetings,” say the authors at Forrester Research.

“In response, the best of today’s collaboration tools – incorporating high definition video conferencing for example – can provide the quality of interaction required to help build confidence and trust…making better use of employees’ time and the corporate budget.”

Two thirds of office workers believe communication in their office could be improved, if the tools they used were changed.

The research indicated that satisfaction in internal communications decreases as the size of the company increases. Less than half of office workers (45 per cent) working in micro businesses considered their communications to be very effective at enabling efficient working.

The figure dropped to 31 per cent for those working in small businesses and just 16 per cent for mid sized companies. However, more than a quarter (26 per cent) of workers for micro enterprises said their tools were very effective.

The research which was commissioned by Cisco, combined results of a poll of more 1,000 UK office workers by Opinion Matters and a study from Mindlab International. The study by Mindlab International measured the brain activity of 24 workers as they conducted office based tasks using telephone conferencing, instant messaging, video conferencing and web conferencing.

It was found that in the majority of situations, visual communication tools were the most effective in a business environment. This was measured by accuracy, efficiency and feedback of the user’s experience.

James Campanini managing director for Cisco WebEx solutions in Europe, Middle East and Africa told HR Magazine: “Tools that are video-enable such as web and video conferencing, help to build trust in the workplace as communications are more interactive, engaging and personal.”

“By being able to take in body language, eye contact and multi-way conversations, the business environment is automatically more collaborative, helping to speed up decision-making. In addition, people should consider that one of the most powerful ways of communicating is by using a combination of tools,” he added.

The UK’s courts could cut down on costs and make it easier for witnesses and suspects to give testimony through greater adoption of video conferencing, according to Justice Minister Jonathan Djanogly.

As reported by the BBC, Mr Djanogly told MPs during a brief on the planned closure of 103 magistrates and 54 county courts that the justice system had to “catch up” with the benefits of new technology. Addressing concerns expressed by committee members that the efficiencies gained from the closures would be lost by the necessary extra distance that solicitors, witnesses and defendants would have to travel, Mr Djanogly said: “access to justice isn’t just about proximity, though that is one issue.”

He has proposed that video conferencing facilities be established throughout the country, in locations such as town halls, shopping centres and police stations, streamlining court proceedings and massively cutting down on the running costs of the justice system.

“I don’t see the future being in bricks and mortar,” he said. “The justice system has not kept up with the use of technology. At some point we are going to have to catch up and that means particularly more use of telephone and video conferencing.”

The Ministry of Justice estimates that closing the courts – some 40% of the UK’s 530 court buildings, according to the Daily Mail - will save public spending £15m a year in running costs and £22m in building maintenance costs. The new system would take a similar approach to business video conferencing, with no need for participants to travel large distances at great inconvenience and centralising core functions of the system to facilitate remote input and collaboration from other locations.

Video conferencing system developer Radvision has announced that it has entered a new strategic partnership with Microsoft to create a unified communications solution for business and enterprise users.

The new partnership was announced at Radvision’s Global Partner Forum in Israel earlier this week, according to Israeli business news source Globes. Radvision says that under the terms of the partnership, it will develop a combination of hardware and software video conferencing solutions fully integrated with Microsoft’s real-time enterprise communications server, Lync.

Trading Markets reports that the benefits of this partnership were briefly highlighted in a keynote presentation at the Forum by Warren Barkley, general manager of the Lync Parnet and Customer Group at Microsoft.

“[Our partnership will] bring customers an interoperable UC solution that allows users to merge their choice of HD video conferencing and telepresence systems with the simplicity of UC at the desktop,” he said. “With the Microsoft and Radvision solutions, customers can have confidence that their existing and new investments in video communications will interoperate within the UC environment.”

Also speaking at the Forum was Scott Morrison, Research Vice President at Gartner intelligence. Mr Morrison said that his firm estimates that in 2009 there were some 1.5 million room-based video conferencing facilities around the world – and that “Vendors that do not include video in a coherent UC platform road map are less likely to succeed in the long-term.”

As reported by Computer Business Review, both companies have also agreed to invest resources in the development, sales and marketing of their joint offering.

UK businesses and their employees have adopted a more conscious approach to the costs of business travel leading to greater use of video conferencing and a new approach to travel policy, according to a new study from American Express Business Travel.

78% of the 500 business executives at mid-sized UK companies surveyed by American Express said they were more conscious of the costs associated with business travel since the recession, reports Travel Daily News. This heightened awareness of travel costs is accompanied by increasing internal pressure to cut travel expenses.

More than half of staff (62%) said they were motivated to cut their travel expenses due to the new habits of their colleagues, with 46% of staff reporting that their bosses are leading by example in cutting flights and downgrading their standard of transport.

Furthermore, around a quarter of respondents (24%) felt that what American Express termed an “age of austerity” for business travel would actually provide a blueprint for the future. The majority of respondents felt that the new, cost-effective approach to business travel would continue for at least two (33%) or three (19%) years.

“Many UK employees and employers are clearly working together to achieve return on investment for travel, and have developed a much more frugal mindset to help them through the downturn,” said Michael Rouse, vice president and general manager of American Express Business Travel EMEA.

40% of firms reported that they had cut their business travel in comparison with the ‘boom times’ of 2002-2007 with a third reporting they had reduced their annual travel budget by some £50,000 per year.

This reduction in costs has been achieved through a variety of methods but the most prevalent has been the use of video conferencing. 62% of respondents said that since the recession they had turned to video conferencing facilities to reduce business travel.

“Companies should not forget that as the economy recovers so prices on core travel commodities such as air and hotel rates are likely to rise,” said Mr Rouse.

BT has showcased its new platform for video conferencing and collaboration with an event linking 20 different locations.

According to a press release from the company, video conferencing facilities in New York, Philadelphia, Denver, Atlanta as well as several sites in London, Brighton and Hawkhurst were linked during the event on the 7th of October despite the fact that each site made use of different technology vendors, equipment types and network connectivity standards.

BT says that their new platform can incorporate multi-vendor immersive high-definition video conferences such as telepresence as well as legacy standard definition video conferencing for both desktop units and larger facilities across multiple networks, including both corporate LANs and the public internet. The showcase event was in support of the upcoming BT Global Video Exchange services which will be made commercially available in December this year.

“We enable organisations to connect over multiple networks using various equipment types, ensuring that our customer’s technology investments are maximised while extending the reach, quality and effectiveness of communications,” said Aaron McCormarck, CEO of BT Conferencing.

The press release states that BT’s new Onward Management System is central to their interoperable unified communications platform, managing different network connections, bridging infrastructure and using Cisco’s new TIP protocol to facilitate interoperability in video conferencing.

The platform incorporates multiple diverse network standards from MPLS to PSTN, as well as different infrastructure vendor standards such as Tandberg VCS control, Polycom Video Border Proxy (VBP) and Cisco CUCM, among others.

Additionally it offers support for various HD/SD technologies, such as Polycom’s HDX 4002 or the Tandberg T1700, alongside support for different vendors of the technology used in telepresence suites including Cisco’s CTS 3000, 1000 and 500 as well as Polycom’s RPX 408, 208 and Tandberg’s T3.

A new study commissioned by Cisco has explored the benefits of business video conferencing beyond the simple reduction in travel and other costs associated with traditional meetings and collaboration methods.

Conducted by Ipsos Mori across 12 countries, the poll of an international sample of workers has found that video conferencing offers benefits such as building trust and improving group collaboration, as well as saving valuable working time. Among those who said they frequently used video conference meetings, 90% said it saved them at least two hours of work time a week – and one-third of these respondents estimated they saved close to a full working day.

“Lost productivity costs businesses billions each year,” said Odd Johnny Winge, formerly of Tandberg and now vice president and general manger of Cisco’s Telepresence Systems business unit.

“We frequently hear from our customers how much they value the more qualitative benefits of Cisco Telepresence and this study validates those benefits are just as powerful as the often-discussed travel and cost-reduction benefits.”

One key finding of the research was that in general, both users (76%) and non-users (60%) of video collaboration technology believe that it offers some value to businesses. However existing frequent users were, perhaps inevitably, more convinced of these than non-users.

For example, 73% of frequent users said they believed it helped keep their business competitive in the market, as opposed to 42% of non-users. Similarly 71% of users said it helped bring people closer together in comparison with just 40% of non-users, with a similar difference in opinion regarding how the technology can improve the work-life balance of employees (70% vs 37%).

Both groups of respondents were agreed though on certain benefits. 68% of all respondents said that video collaboration would improve communication when employees are working from home and 67% said it would both improve group collaboration and reduce confusion when work is distributed over several different locations.

Despite the focus on other benefits, the research also touched upon how the environmental benefits of video conferencing and collaboration technology are perceived.

Across all respondents, 68% said they perceived the technology as having some benefit to the environment, whether as an aspect of the company’s overall environmental policy or through the direct reduction of needless travel. In all 12 markets surveyed by Ipsos Mori, at least 50% of workers agreed with this statement.

Video conferencing solutions are often considered purely within a business context but the benefits of the technology aren’t just limited to the boardroom. 

Whilst more exotic applications such as telemedicine or the recent trend for telesentencing – where defendants appear in court via video conference – are significantly different from their use in business, other groups have seen strong returns using it in a more conventional manner.

One such example is the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, responsible for wildlife preservation across 83,642 square miles of mountainous territory.

According to a report in ComputerWorld, for the past three years the department has used video conferencing facilities across seven dispersed locations to save biologists and wildlife officials the need to make car journeys that can be as long as eight hours for routine meetings.

“I’ve not heard people say the system is indispensable,” says Craig Potchter, CIO for the department. “But people do say ‘hey its really cool’ and ‘thanks for putting it in  – it saves me two days of travel’.”

The department’s video conferencing facilities consist of seven studios equipped with room-sized HD video displays, as well as about 10 smaller desktop systems. According to Potchter, some 50 different sessions take place on the system in any given month.

“It isn’t always productive to bring people in from around the state for a one or two hour meeting,” says Potchter, “Video conferencing is very beneficial where sharing of data and videos are needed. Standard audio calls just don’t work very well for that purpose.”

Western Europe and North America are leading the use of video conferencing in place of traditional business travel, according to new research produced by the Institute of Travel and Meetings (ITM) and American Express Business Travel.

Responses gathered from business travel managers through survey and focus group research for the Changing The Game: The Impact of New Technologies on Business Travel report indicate that technology-based communication methods are increasingly the norm for internal business meetings. In particular, 90% of respondents said that in their experience, video conferencing, telepresence and other digital communication and collaboration methods were becoming standard practice in Western Europe and North America.

“Companies are focused on achieving peak employee productivity by using technology to reduce costs as new options to support a managed travel program, but also to connect people on the road more effectively,” said Christina Degnan Manning of American Express Business Travel in a release through Business Wire.

“Advancements in video technologies, mobile devices and social media solutions are enhancing collaboration and relationship building through more seamless communication.”

According to the survey’s findings, more than half (59%) of business travellers have been offered the choice of using video conferencing services to attend internal meetings. Furthermore 52% of business travellers believe that a video conference will generate the same or greater ROI than a meeting conducted face-to-face.

The research also found that for 63% of business travel buyers, video conferencing solutions have been adopted over the past three years because of the cost reductions.

Britain’s roads should be cleared for the personal use of cars by increased use of video conferencing, flexible working patterns and high speed broadband, Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond has said.

Speaking to a business conference in London last week, Phillip Hammond said that the government and UK businesses faced “huge challenges” in making the switch to a truly sustainable economy.

GreenWise Business reports that Mr Hammond told the conference that greater allowances for home working and the increased uptake of video conferencing solutions for internal and external meetings would be facilitated by the introduction of high speed broadband, and when combined, would lead to a significant reduction in travel congestion and carbon emissions.

The Transport Secretary addressed concerns that “going green” would require draconian measures to discourage the use of cars for travel. He said there was “no realistic prospect” for displacing the private car and that he did not subscribe to the idea of coercing motorists to stop using their vehicles.

“Whether we like it or not,” he said, “the ability to travel point-to-point on an individually tailored timetable is one of the great quality of life gains of the second half of the 20th century – and not one that people will give up without a fight.”

Instead Hammond said that the car would likely remain the transport of choice for medium, suburban or rural travelling but that in many cases this travel could be avoided if the right services were in place. He told the IBM-organised conference that one of the priorities for his department was “tackling climate change through policies which deliver technology and behaviour that will decarbonise mobility as we progress through the 21st century.”

“Promoting alternatives is a key part of the sustainability agenda,” said Hammond, adding, “It is not the mission of the department for transport to stop people travelling but unnecessary travel is expensive in environmental and financial terms.”