What is conferencing?
We colloquially refer to ‘conferencing’ as a collaborative service that allows companies to hold virtual meetings with remote offices and external participants from virtually any type of terminal or collaboration point.
It offers a first-class video collaboration experience, with high-definition (HD) image quality and an unrivalled user experience. As it is a managed service, i.e. controlled from end to end, it allows the entire process to be monitored and administered, which is extremely useful when it comes to identifying the cause of a fault or incident.
What are the main types?
In practical terms, conferencing encompasses different modalities:
- Audio conferencing: high-quality sound only.
- Video conferencing: sound, HD image and content sharing.
- Telepresence: high-definition sound, high-quality image and immersion. In other words, it is as if the participants were actually in the same room, and not just connected via a screen.
This type of service has become critical for the workplace in companies, especially after the boost provided by the 2020 pandemic.
What are the key elements?
The basic architecture of a conferencing service comprises several components that are essential for audiovisual communication and real-time resource management, such as:
· Endpoints / Client Equipment: these are the devices (PCs, mobile phones, dedicated equipment rooms) used by participants. They include peripherals such as cameras, microphones, speakers and screens, as well as the software or client programme that connects to the central service.
· Network infrastructure: this is the connectivity base that transmits data (audio, video, content) between client equipment and the server. It requires a stable IP network with sufficient upload and download bandwidth to handle real-time multimedia streams.
· Conference server or media gateway: this is the core of the system, responsible for mixing the audio and video transmissions of multiple participants. It manages system resources, processes calls, and receives audio and video streams from all participants, combining them into a single composite stream that is then sent to each client.
· Management and scheduling software: additional components that allow administrators and users to schedule meetings, manage participants, control the settings for each conferencing session, and monitor the system.
· Encoders: algorithms that compress and decompress audio and video data for efficient transmission over the network, optimising bandwidth usage without sacrificing quality.
What benefits does it offer over other digital tools?
Initially, companies deployed these services to reduce their operating costs. However, technological advances have added other advantages, including increases in employee productivity (fostering a new culture of communication and knowledge sharing and generating quick and effective meetings), new revenue opportunities (improving customer relations, accelerating the implementation of key strategies and initiatives in a company) and improving CSR outreach. – Corporate Social Responsibility (reduces carbon footprint and facilitates work-life balance and accessibility).
These and the following benefits make conferencing services a superior solution compared to other unmanaged digital tools, especially in business environments that require quality, security, integration and professional support:
- Guaranteed audiovisual quality (end-to-end QoS): Broadband audio with echo cancellation and noise suppression, HD/4K video with dynamic bandwidth adaptation and smooth content sharing. Provides a consistent experience, supported by dedicated infrastructure and continuous measurement.
- Proactive management and monitoring: End-to-end visibility: real-time telemetry, alarms, root cause diagnosis and monitoring of network, platform, devices and rooms. Includes tracking of key KPIs (MOS, losses, latency) and executive reports.
- Security and compliance: Communications encryption, access control, information classification, retention and audit policies, etc.
- Interoperability: Seamless connection between audio conferencing, video conferencing and telepresence; compatibility between different platforms (SIP/H.323, gateways to Teams/Zoom/Webex/Meet, etc.), federation between domains and connectors with telephony (SBC, PSTN).
- User and room experience: One-click connection from any device, consistent interfaces, contextual assistants, automatic framing, live transcription/captioning and accessibility (captions, readers, contrast). All of this provides the best call experience for every participant.
- Scalability and resilience: Distributed, multi-region architecture and clear service level agreements (SLAs). Capacity for peaks (mass meetings/assemblies) without degrading critical sessions.
- Integration with the digital and collaborative workplace: Calendar, email, chat, documents and workflows (e.g. co-authoring and secure sharing), use of APIs for business processes (ticketing, CRM).
- · Service governance and support: Catalogue and service levels, roles and responsibilities, operation playbooks, up to 24/7 multilingual support, incident management and problem resolution.
- · Network and device optimisation: Users can access from any device (PCs, tablets, smartphones, softphones, rooms, immersive and collaborative equipment, etc.) and from anywhere, simply by connecting to a ‘virtual room’. It uses an architecture that minimises the impact of distance on delay-sensitive components, utilises a flexible and scalable infrastructure, and frees customers from tedious hardware and software updates, managing them with efficient policies, processing inventory and certifying end-customer equipment.
What challenges does conferencing face in the future?
Human beings are social creatures and, as such, enjoy communicating. One of the challenges will therefore be to ensure that these conferencing services evolve towards more natural communication models, which means that their ability to adapt to new technologies will be crucial, as they will have to evolve in order to remain relevant.
These challenges will require conferencing providers to maintain a strategy of constant innovation, ensuring that the service remains competitive, secure and aligned with the business and technological needs of the future.
How can the development of new technologies impact this?
The development of new technologies can radically transform the user experience, audiovisual quality and interoperability between platforms. Conferencing solutions must be prepared to incorporate both more disruptive advances such as holographic communications, artificial intelligence and augmented reality, and more continuous ones such as process automation and the continuous improvement of security and accessibility.
